Avoiding AI slop as a wargamer

If you are anything like me then you are probably sick and tired of seeing AI slop everywhere you look. Thankfully, the wargaming space on Bluesky is largely free of such abominations. However, previously useful resources such as Google image searches, Pinterest, and the like are flooded with AI generated images. Not only do I find this deeply frustrating from a moral standpoint (remember kids, AI doesn’t create from scratch, it just steals), not to mention its environmental impact, but so often the images created by AI are just incorrect, especially when dealing with historical subjects. Frustratingly, this torrent of AI content has drowned out legitimately valuable sources of knowledge on the web, making doing research online so much harder whilst also actively harming the livelihoods of genuine creative types. The enshittification of the internet is well and truly here. However, there are a few things you can do to shield yourself from this sh**storm of slop, at least whilst you are online.

A basic thing you can do is to change how you search for information online. If using Google you can filter your date searches. I would recommend doing this to anything pre-2020, as this filters out 99% of the AI nonsense. The best way to do this is by adding “Before:2020” onto the end of your search entry. You can use the date filter on the toolbar, but this is less reliable and often hidden if you are using a mobile. You can also use browsers that enable you to turn off AI content. DuckDuckGo for instance allows you to turn off the AI generated searches that Google provides as standard. Firefox is another good example.

Sadly, it is not always possible to simply filter out AI content automatically. Therefore, we must get better at spotting AI for ourselves. The best way is to refer to trusted individuals and companies within the wargaming community, people with a proven track record we know are reliable and do not use AI. Conversely, if you stumble across someone unfamilar to you and the wider community who is producing an incredible amount of content in a short space of time, this is an indicator of AI use (although not always, sometimes they just have an incredible work ethic!) YouTube is particularly bad for this, with an estimated 25%+ of all content (and rising) now being AI produced or assisted. AI content on sites such as YouTube and Instagram should have a tag advising they are AI, but this cannot always be relied upon.

With this in mind, please do not give money to people who use AI in their work. If someone is selling a product that they have created or manipulated in some way with AI, then purchasing this product (or even getting it for free) actively undermines real creatives. I have heard the counter-argument that this puritan approach is a perhaps a bit hardline, and that some creators simply do not have the resources to use real humans for work such as voiceovers, image creation, and so on. My retort is that real art costs money and/or time. Learn these skills for yourself, or produce a product in a way that allows you to support real creatives by paying for their services. Everyone has the capacity to learn, and this is the essence of true creativity. It takes time to develop a skill. Ultimately, in the long-term if we fail to support real people then they won’t be there to produce genuine art, and we will end up with a mountain of AI slop instead.

When looking at images on the web, trust your gut. If an image seems “off”, or too good to be true (especially historical photographs) then be sceptical. You can use reverse image searches such as Tin Eye to track down the origin of such images. If it does not come from a trusted source or has no history at all, its likely to be AI. You need to do the same with STL files, as I have heard of an increasing number of unscrupulous people putting out poor quality AI generated files out there. If there’s just a STL image and no image of a real product, be wary.

If you are a creator then there are tactics you can use to avoid having your creative works stolen by AI. Watermarks, anti-AI tools, clearing your meta data, using privacy focussed browsers and software, etc, are all vital tools in your arsenal. However, my knowledge of this is largely theoretical (most of my creative work is for magazines rather than being strictly online) therefore I would recommend you go and research this area for yourself if you are worried about this.

Finally, outside of the wargaming space, if you are concerned about the use of AI in fraud (and trust me, you should be) then this is an entirely different conversation, well beyond the scope of this article. However, I recommend you look into this topic as criminals are increasingly using AI to support their efforts, enabling them to commit very sophisticated scams.  

Thank you for reading this far. While we can’t stop the AI monster, we can shield ourselves from some of its effects on our hobby.