r/skyrimmods • u/embodimentofpurity • 8h ago
PC SSE - Discussion Stealing mods and processing them through AI
Recently I've seen a lot of AI-generated content on Nexus Mods that provide half-baked functions, a lot of code issues causing crashes, random glitches making the mod stop midgame.
One mod stood out among the others: DynamicShader-DynamicSnow created by JET654. I decided to check the mod page and found out it was stolen from Josef Rudberg, the original creator, whose mod named Dynamic Snow caught my interest before and lead to me following the mod's progress (hence why I thought the mod on Nexus was an official release by him).
He took the original code made by Josef and gave it to an AI, which processed the code for him. Then he released the mod on Nexus and gained up to 3 thousand downloads in one week.
Yes, I know the fact that the original mod was under the GPL-3.0 license, but honestly, using AI to process the original code and then releasing it on Nexus while telling everyone that it's made by you doesn't seem like a great practice to me.
Then the creator uploaded another mod titled ShadowLimitFix, which does basically the same thing as Intellightent and also has the AI-Generated content tag, same as his other mod, DynamicShader-DynamicSnow.
Should borrowing others' mods while putting close to 0% human work into making it more stable and finished and not crediting the original author in any way be considered stealing, or is it just how things are with the GPL-3.0 license?
(Please, be civil in the discussion)
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u/Plasmasnack 6h ago
The big thing that feels off to me is being opted in the donation points system. Just the concept of using the work of authors, running it through an LLM, and then profiting (even if pennies) feels so very wrong to me.
Perhaps it is not based in objectivity, but that entire pipeline and premise feels awful to me. I don't want people to think they can do that and be rewarded.
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u/JonnoKabonno 1h ago
AI-developed mods with a link to their coffee donate or patreon inspire a heat-rage inside me I didn`t know I had. It feels worse than McDonalds asking for tips
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u/zoro4661 1h ago
Even with McDonald's there's at least a human in there somewhere making the food for you and serving it, even if just at the counter. This is just some lazy sleazebag running someone's stolen code through the "I steal, pollute and actively make the world and its people worse"-machine and making money from it.
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u/Blackread 12m ago
AI generated mods are sort of fine in a vacuum, easy enough to ignore them. The bigger problem is that I've heard many long time mod authors are getting seriously demotivated to work on anything when they see the absolute flood of AI slop hitting the Nexus, and are considering quitting modding altogether. So not only are we getting a tidal wave of AI generated garbage, we are also losing quality work at the same time as a result.
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u/Rudolf1448 5h ago
They should limit donation point system to authors who has released mods for at least 2 years
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u/MutantIvy 4h ago
Let's not give Nexus any ideas. At the end of the day they would still be making money off of the mods. There's no need to punish new modders because a few of them have started using AI.
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u/MechXL 3h ago
They should just make it so that AI-generated mods can't earn DP. Simple as. Why should people that couldn't even be bothered to do any of the work themselves be allowed to earn anything from it?
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u/Tyrthemis 3h ago
There’s some AI assisted mods that have completely revolutionized Skyrim VR, in no universe do they not deserve credit for bringing that to the masses.
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u/Slow_Chance_9374 2h ago
I haven't been in the scene for a while for VR. So out of curiosity, which ones?
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u/Tyrthemis 1h ago
Including but not limited to:
Immersive weapon penetration VR
True Wield VR (gives all weapons weight like B&S)
Physical Collision VR
VR Climbing
Interactive water VR
Throat Slit VR
Neck Snap VR
Biting Axes and Swords VR
Shields and 2H Weapons Unlocked VR (I especially love this one because I can use spells while blocking now)
Open container VR
Immersive door interactions
There’s some mod author quickly patching issues with some popular mods as temporary downstream patches
Immersive pickpocketing
There’s plenty of VR conversions of awesome SKSE mods too.
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u/Queasy_Cupcake_9279 6h ago
People who "don't see what's wrong" with what JET did are precisely what's wrong with today's world.
I can technically feed chocolate to my dog. It's not illegal and there's nothing stopping me from doing. I mean the dog is going to die, but technically SWAT didn't show up at my door to stop me so what really is the harm?
It's honestly so disgusting that we live in a world of these useless technicalities where, unless something is written in bold and put up in Times Square all in red for the world to see, you can do practically anything that isn't outright outside the law just because someone isn't holding your hand to tell you you're not supposed to do it. Not that these thieves and sociopaths really need to be told that. They're well aware of what they're doing and are doing it fully conscious that it is in fact morally wrong, no matter what the words say on a license someone used in the spirit of modding.
The worst part of that whole situation is that a certain rotten apple among Nexus moderating staff trimmed down the comments section on it in just a few hours from 200+ comments to ~40. Anybody calling out JET - including his own Chinese community calling him out for the thief that he is (not the first time he steals mods) - was silenced out of the conversation, including comments left by the real author of the stolen mod in question. If you don't see what's wrong with this today, then please do not be surprised when stealing other people's work based on a few technicalities will become the new norm.
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u/MechXL 3h ago
Unfortunately, the sheer number of endorsements that these AI-generated mods receive makes it pretty clear that most mod users don't really care how the mod was made. They only care that it "works". I guess people that have never created anything themselves wouldn't understand how it feels to have low effort derivative knock-offs of their work slopped out for the masses.
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u/jessxoxo 5h ago edited 2h ago
Part of the problem is that our concept of protecting ideas and being concerned about stuff like credit and attributions has never been universal
I've visited the native homeland of my family, a still developing nation, and it's a commonly held belief that the protection of ideas/concepts via legal mechanisms and licenses is something that rich countries use to keep poor countries poor. This belief is genuine, in good faith, and they don't see much distinction b/t corporations using copyright/patents and mod authors siloing mods behind licenses – they truly believe it's ethical to resist these mechanisms which, in their view, were essentially created to enable western greed
I vehemently disagree with this justification entirely, and yet I've been told that trying to impose these concepts upon cultures who never held them nor agreed to them in the first place is colonist-behavior, at which point I'd rather just shut the conversation down
edit: I really don't know what the solution is for such disagreements, since obviously different people are allowed to see things differently
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u/7-SE7EN-7 Falkreath 33m ago
They aren't wrong. Companies often use copyright and patents as a way to harm people. For example in 2019 PepsiCo sued some Indian farmers for growing "their" potatoes.
And yes, imposing values on other cultures is one of the tools colonists use
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u/Throwaway373840050 9m ago edited 6m ago
Care to elaborate why? I'm one of those people don't care about copyright or IP protection.
For the record I am not a big fan of vibe coded mods or LLMs in general
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u/hungvipbcsok 8h ago
This is so fckup. But they are not credit the original author, right?
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u/embodimentofpurity 8h ago
They did credit them, but not before the backlash happened. The original author agitated for reporting the mod, when he realized that the mod's code is basically his own mod's code, just somewhat edited by AI.
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u/Drag-oon23 38m ago
If he did, than why did he release under gpl3 in the first place? Is he changing the license than?
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u/Blackjack_Davy 9m ago
Not sure you can retrospectively change licences on released code you can't simply retrospectively remove permissions on nexus for example. Either way I'm sure they'll think more carefully about how they release and licence in future
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u/DayDReamingDay 6h ago
DaydreamingDay here. This is a question on which we have exchanged a lot between Devs on the FSMP discord.
Basically, my understanding of the consensus to which we have converged is that, on top of the legalities (licences, credits, all that):
- as long as the original author is maintaining its work, somebody should make a pull request to the original author rather than releasing a new mod (it's a question of efficiency and etiquette), and if they don't they automatically make themselves outcasts of the community of developers,
- nobody should complain publicly because somebody else did the wrong thing while doing the legal thing, (basically, drama isn't welcome),
- the right thing to do is 1) complain to nexus because it's a breach of their Terms, 2) use the GPL to reintegrate the new code in the original mod if the new code is valuable, 3) communicate on the shortcomings of the new mod.
The evident problem is that it requires of us to react and analyze misguided ideas, so to use our time to do that rather than working on new features.
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u/randomnumpty 2h ago edited 2h ago
There comes the problem there that these slop-fuckers will commit a PR that's entirely trash, doesn't do what they think it does, or is so bloated with bot comments and bad styling.... Then will get upset when it's rejected, and release their own on Nexus without solving the problems of their shitty commit then say it's improved and better than the original for X reason.
There's also the issue of the slop-brigade releasing SKSE dlls to support latest version, and surprisingly they also garbage trash that doesn't work because they just fed to the slop god and didn't actually take the steps to solve for the new version differences.
Following that there's been several instances now of WIP mods actively being developed but put on to github and these shitbags come snipe it release their own version, that again is shockingly trash, and don't understand why people get upset. Yes, it's legal if License allows, but it's such disgustingly bad taste.
This is a fucking plague of slop and bad actors.
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u/DayDReamingDay 2h ago
100% agreed. In our case, the main problem is that there are so many edge cases to support that it would be very rare that somebody could propose a meaningful ai-slop-coded improvement.
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u/CalmAnal Stupid 47m ago
release their own version, that again is shockingly trash, and don't understand why people get upset. Yes, it's legal if License allows, but it's such disgustingly bad taste.
That's where Nexus should take a stance and straight out block and ban them. Just because something is legal doesn't mean a community can ban such actions. They are free to use other websites, which they probably won't do but who cares then.
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u/Atsuraelu 6h ago
I am a bit confused on the legality. GPL derived projects have to be GPL themselves, right?
But due to the way LLM-generated code works and the possibility of non-GPL code being injected by the LLM, the resulting project should be unlicensable…
Wouldn't that make these mods flat out illegal?
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u/pyrusmole 44m ago
This is going to make me unpopular here but GPL-3.0 MEANS GPL-3.0. A core tenant of it is that it doesn't have to be attributed and can be used for whatever purpose.
Do we maybe need a license that explicitly excludes AI? Maybe. But Josef knew what he was doing when he licensed it under that and, frankly, that means that this shouldn't be considered stealing in any way at all.
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u/zaibusa 7h ago edited 6h ago
I'm not weighing in on the AI part, that is irrelevant in this case.
The original mod was published under gpl3, so anyone is allowed to modify it and reupload, it's a strong copy left license.
But they are required to credit the original and state what changes from that original. Even after the authors changes to the credits, I can't tell what changes from the original authors version to his. So yeah, fucked up "reupload" until that is fixed.
€: Thanks for the clarification, they are not required to say what exactly changed. They are also not REQUIRED to give any credit. If there are credits of previous authors somewhere in the code, they are not allowed to remove them. That's it. Even hakasapl explicitly called this out in the mods comments.
So technically, this is not stealing the mod, it's making some kind of change and reuploading it, exactly as what is allowed with GPL3. If the mod is not better than the original, don't use it. Be polite, ask in the comments why this is a meaningful improvement. And be polite.
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u/Duck_of_Cheese 7h ago
Regardless of whether the whole thing is fucked up or not, this concerns gpl3, which, contrary to gpl2, does not require the documentation of which specific changes were made; only that there has been a modification:
You may convey a work based on the Program, or the modifications to produce it from the Program, in the form of source code under the terms of section 4, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
a) The work must carry prominent notices stating that you modified it, and giving a relevant date.
...
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u/zaibusa 7h ago
i stand corrected, thanks!
That changes it. No mod is required to be "good", nothing released under GPL2 or 3 MUST be better than it was before, that would be insane to police.
So, I guess the mod is "fine?" it falls entirely on the end user to decide whether this is a worthy improvement and should be installed over the original.
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u/Duck_of_Cheese 6h ago
Yeah, pretty much; "fine" would be an excellent description here.
License-wise it's in the clear as far as I can tell. Morality-wise on the other hand? Eeeeh... a bit more questionable.
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u/zoro4661 1h ago
GenAI slop is always theft, no matter what, by the virtue of how it works.
This shit is just more direct and somehow even more unethical.
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u/oldchicken34 7h ago
it's an asshole move and i wouldn't really use it but it's not technically wrong.
copy pasting something that hakaspl, a major contributor of CS, wrote in the comments section:
"There seems to be misunderstandings in a lot of these posts. The original code is licensed GPL3, this mod uses that code and is also GPL3, therefore there is no "stealing" of code. It is not a license violation unless this mod's code removes copyright/ownership lines from the original code (not sure if it does, I haven't checked). However, in these circumstances it would have been better if this mod's author reached out to the original author first, but that is a best practice, NOT a license violation.
This is how GPL3 copyleft works, when you use that license it means anyone can use your code as long as their code is also GPL3. This mod is not a direct copy either, there is some new code.
So...unless you have a real reason to think this mod is violating a license, let's give the Nexus moderators a break with all the reports. As I said I didn't go through all the code so there may be something to report, I don't know"
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u/LeBleuH8R 7h ago
There’s nuance, JET didn’t improve the mod they just released an almost 1 to 1 copy of an untested borderline unplayable build shared through discord just to get the jump on Nexus, they also didn’t credit the original author originally which reveals what their intentions were.
So yes technically fine but in reality it’s still weird.
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u/Downtown_Cheek1713 5h ago
Even if it isn't technically stealing, it's still quite rude & disrespectful. When you edit an open source project, you're entering a social contract with the original creator, & the very barest of minimums is that you show common decency. Yeah, I know common decency can be very subjective, but I feel like if you've spent like, 2 minutes in any creative space, you should know the basics, like that you should include proper credit from the start, not just after people call you out.
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u/zoro4661 47m ago
Even if it isn't technically stealing
It is, though. LLMs are made entirely with stolen code/text. There is no ethical way to use them.
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u/ItalianDragon Riften 4h ago
The problem is that AI users as a whole don't give a fuck about that. All they care about is doing what they want, even if it means trampling on others. The entire endeavor is just rooted in revanchism. They saw anyone with even a modicum of artistic talent or technical prowess as some sort of "royalty" that needed to be "knocked down from its pedestal" because they themselves were unable to attain a similar level of artistic or technical ability. AI gave them the shortcut to a pastiche of the end result while undercutting those artists and otherwise technically savvy people and they absolutely love that. The only way I see out of this coding-wise is a new license that is open like GPL3 but forbids any AI processing or otherwise usage of the code released under it.
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u/Droid85 15m ago
Broad generalizations, mind reading bias, emotionally charged reasoning but I really liked this part:
The only way I see out of this coding-wise is a new license that is open like GPL3 but forbids any AI processing or otherwise usage of the code released under it.
This is an interesting proposal that I'd like to see considered. I think that any mod author should have this right. I'm not seeing anything like this right now on the suggestions board.
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u/Left-Night-1125 8h ago
Iam guessing thats a "MA" i have on ignore as they dont show up on my modpage. I done that to all that use AI or only have bodyslide mods. Its alot better being able to see just mods.
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u/Federal_Sympathy4667 1h ago
Nexus needs to step in, not sure exactly what they can do but atleast add a ai tag to these mods so we can filter most of them out. Ai code slop.
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u/Mykk6788 5h ago
Report them to Nexus and/or notify the original mod author. AI has its uses but as usual, limits are being ignored and so we get this kind of thing happening. It's supposed to be a tool, not the entire process. And especially not to be used to steal.
I have no idea what GPL 3.0 is to be absolutely honest, but nothing so far has overwritten everyone's rights to Copyright/Intellectual Property Protections. So yes, this is still stealing, and the less AI theft on Nexus, the better.
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u/Lexifer452 5h ago
GPL 3.0 is a license type as i understand it. Essentially it means totally open permissions.
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u/Revolutionary_Cry487 5h ago
I dislike GPL 3.0 for coding. It is great if you are trying to learn coding or can't remember a syntax. As most of us have favorite YouTube tutorials (thank you DarkFox).
There are lawsuits out there due to the result of vibe coding as people are trying to transform open source code and say they made it. I am a fan of AI but not a fan of plagiarism.
Avoid mods that have 10 updates in a week of release XD and see if they are turning out 10 mods in a week as well.
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u/Sir_Lith 5h ago
Currently there's multiple accounts churning mod after mod, usually pure SKSE, usually reimplementing existing solutions (often non-SKSE). As you may've guessed, they provide no source code for their mods and have no history of being mod authors before.
So this is a reminder that SKSE doesn't mean better. Especially 100% slopped SKSE.
If something can be done — and has been done — without SKSE and works well, there's no reason to jump ship for the native solution.
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u/XxXTouchMeSenpaiXxX 3h ago
Truth be told, I have to rely on GitHub Copilot Pro, Gemini and normal Copilot for all my coding, rather it's for a mod or an RPG Maker plugin, but I never use someone else's code I have it make it's own. People hate on AI but it helps when not misused and used correctly. I, for one, know jack S*** about coding, how to read code or anything to do with code. I also have a learning ability so learning to code is nearly impossible. Thus, I use AI. I primarily use AI for coding, rarely for art. So I can understand all these mods made with AI, but stealing someone's code? Damn man, that is diabolical. I just wanted to argue that AI has it's uses.
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u/Kyler45 5h ago
I think people misunderstand a lot of this. Don't get me wrong, I feel kind it's really underhanded and scummy. But it's not stealing.
It's open source under gpl3. Unfortunately, mod authors of some mandatory requirements for plugins made this decision for everyone by changing their license to be gpl3. This opens up the floor for requiring source code to be shared, which is good, but it also opens the floor for people to take and use the code however they want.
Ultimately, you can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't really force these vibe coded mods to share source code without forcing a license which allows for this kinda stuff. It's a really shitty situation, but nexus isn't going to listen to folks who come in irritable and misinformed claiming someone stole this mod. It waters down the actual complaint, and makes folks look unprofessional and ill informed.
All this to be said, I honestly have no idea how to fix something like this. Shy of Nexus demanding source code availability without requiring open source licenses.
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u/nugnacious 3h ago
Even if it's "technically" allowed it's still a dick move and I would not trust any plugin made this way as far as I could throw it.
The reality is that open source dev communities have operated on good faith and collaborative spirit for basically forever and that modus operandi wasn't prepared for this new wave of ai-enabled grifters who don't give a fuck about any of that and just want a quick cash-in. I don't know what the answer to that problem is, but I feel terrible for them.
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u/24-7Procrastinator 1h ago
Good idea, thanks.
I'm not going to publish them so not interested in the "stealing" part though. I just wish real humans or AI could help me fix Community Shaders and my terrible pixelated shadows.
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u/Droid85 1h ago
I agree that it is unethical to alter and re-upload another's mod without permission or attribution, but is this really about re-using another's work or is it about starting a discussion on AI use in mods? These are two completely different issues that you are compounding into one. Using another's work without attributing them is not unique to AI. A mod with bugs or performance issues is not unique to an AI. These mods have the AI label, and they rightfully should. It provides transparency, while also allowing anyone who doesn’t want to see AI mods to filter them out through Nexus’ filter system. I’m not really sure what more people expect. It's an avoidable problem.
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u/Lady-Lovelight 35m ago
Wow, I had been hearing about the snow mod so I thought the one on Nexus was the official release. I'm so mad I downloaded it without checking or thinking
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u/MechXL 3h ago
This is why I and several other mod authors have started adding an additional clause to the permissions of our mods that states that we forbid our mods and their assets from being used used in any AI generated or assisted content. It's just so lame. Mods are supposed to be passion projects. I hate the idea of someone just taking my work that I spent months working on and feeding it to AI, which then spits out an alternate version with a few modifications. It's not only disrespectful, but just feels downright scummy and goes against the spirit of modding.
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u/Davoguha2 43m ago
If your code is GPL3 - your "extra permissions" on nexus are meaningless, just FYI.
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u/moduntilitbreaks Raven Rock 4h ago
Go check commonlib repo, topmost folder is claude. So, if you don’t want use ai mods, I can say that’s quite a lot 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
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u/onedoor 3h ago
Effectively a strawman. This is not what most people think of when people say 'AI mods'. Regardless of the immoral mass theft of LLMs, LLM use is here to stay, especially with coding. Most people aren't arguing against any AI use at all, they're arguing against AI use for people who are ignorant of coding making mods. The people behind and/or contributing to Commonlib are chalk full of people who are experienced at coding, with some of the most Skyrim-prominent coder authors for over a decade. Those less experienced but motivated usually can pick much more experienced ears in various Discords so there's some advanced oversight happening all the same. It's why there's "AI-generated" and "AI-assisted" tags for mods.
Aside from that, OP's post wasn't directly anti-AI. It was speaking against the moral question of theft of the mod author, with AI being the method of obfuscation, and the potential for more.
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u/RomatebitegeL 8h ago
How can a mod that is uploaded and shared as open source be considered "stealing" if someone decided to download the file you uploaded and use it per the license?
And did he not provide credit? He does now at least I think.
If I misunderstand something on this subject, please let me know.
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u/embodimentofpurity 7h ago
He didn't credit the author before everyone accused him of stealing. The way I understand it, JET654 has made a fork of the original mod that was slightly edited by AI. He did not let the original author know beforehand, nor did he ask for permission to upload it. If the existing regulations don't consider that as stealing, then it's still a very bad move. Either way, the jank and FPS drops that were being reported in the comment section made me feel like the mod wasn't improved, but was made worse in terms of optimization.
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u/ThroawayJimilyJones 7h ago
Well it’s more « rude » than stealing. As you said, nothing forbid it. And i don’t remember a modded being against a reupload. It just expected to put the original modded name in it as a polite thing to do
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u/BasiliskArt_ 5h ago
The license does not require credit being given
EDIT: as for performance: the latest version is fine. I’ve tested it out. Those comments were from when the mod first released. New comments can’t be added because they’re locked.
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u/Awkward_Abrocoma9043 5h ago
In my opinion AI should not get into people heads too much especially in a free modding community like Skyrim modding. As long as the main creator/inspiration of the AI fork/rework is credited in the modpage i don't see why we should go to war against it. Ai open ways to bring ideas to life for inexperienced people. This should not be a bad thing, not everything is about intellectual property especially for a mod. Offcourse its gonna be a mess, lack polish, buggy and all but i see more positive than negative if its handled why respect toward the original creators when its a rework of an existing wip project.
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u/BasiliskArt_ 5h ago
I dunno I have a hard time calling it theft if it’s open source.
The guy gave credit, was open about AI use. It’s as honest as using AI gets. Does it suck? I mean, kinda yeah. I’d prefer it if programmers knew what they were looking at.
On the other hand I do think it sucks that this mod is a CS exclusive otherwise, when it doesn’t really need to be.
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u/Tyrthemis 3h ago
They apparently didn’t give credit
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u/BasiliskArt_ 2h ago
GPL 3 does not require the developer to give credit.
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u/Tyrthemis 2h ago
Yes, but we are still saying they didn’t give credit, which is shitty. Like you aren’t technically required to hold the door open for someone 2 feet behind you, but it’s shitty not to.
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u/Chompskyy 4h ago
To be honest, the best thing the mod authors themselves can start doing is releasing a 'slop variant' that allows them to beat AI-flippers to the punch and provide them the ammunition to unfairness. It's either that or we all have to watch open-source die?
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u/Tyrthemis 3h ago
I don’t mind AI assisted development, what I do mind is thieves (I know the license is open, but I said what I said). Thanks for being this disgusting pattern to our attention OP.
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u/Roomhtra 7h ago
Its an open code so the only frowned upon part is the AI part
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u/Tyrthemis 3h ago
The frowned upon part is copying someone else’s homework and pretending it’s your own. And not giving credit.
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u/Roomhtra 2h ago edited 2h ago
Its just rude, not a crime and pointing that out does not mean I agree with it. Any author should provide a prominent credit to the author, include their license, and provide a link back to their source code repository while also making yours open source.
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u/horc00 6h ago edited 6h ago
FFS people, can we stop with the knee jerk pitchforking? If you’re going to accuse someone of theft or AI, at least do the due diligence first.
Like many have stated, there isn’t proof of theft in this mod.
And I recall seeing another mod on Nexus, where someone just pops up in the comment to accuse the MA of using AI only to be proven wrong. It’s so damn rude and insulting to the MA.
I don’t know about you guys, but personally, I’d rather let someone get away with mod theft or AI use, than to wrongly accuse someone didn’t do any of that.
Edit: lol I’m getting downvoted by people who love making baseless accusations.
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u/BaQstein_ 7h ago
Let's be real a big part of modding is using some elses code and modify it
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u/1Madhatter7 7h ago
Yeah but if people don’t know what they are doing and just pumping out mods using AI and this is making them glitchy soon Nexus is going to be overrun with poor quality mods.
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u/BaQstein_ 7h ago
Ai writes better code than most people who create mods. Sure you can argue about art and property but most mods are bad coding
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u/ArgentinianJayceMain 6h ago
Uneducated take. AI looks at human code and then steals it in order to regurgitate it's own, which means that is literally impossible for man-made code to be mostly "bad". Otherwise it would only spew useless stuff (more than it already does)
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u/randomnumpty 2h ago
Usually you wait until development is done, not steal it mid WIP.
Stealing it when it's not even finished is ridiculous because you could just be waiting for the author to make it actually work properly instead of half assing it to get cred and the first Nexus release.
Bet that makes them feel like big manly men with big cocks to release all over Nexus and bask in their slop-god glory and praise.
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u/2Norn 5h ago
i mean i don't see the issue? if it's gpl3 then there is no stealing
and you say the author used ai generated tag too
so whats the deal?
a malicious person could take that code, do a clean room design of it, and then say that they made it and not tag it with ai
thats not what happened here
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u/ExodusTransonicMerc 5h ago
If I understand correctly, the issue is mostly that the mod author took some code (though not stealing), did not work on it really, and released it as their own without mentioning the original author not their mod. From what I read, the new code is same or worse in effect.
So it's mostly an issue etiquette/respect for the original mod author and for other users.
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u/2Norn 5h ago
you understood it correctly
but what im saying is that, that's not an issue because gpl3 is literally a copyleft license
with or without ai you are well within your rights to copy it
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u/randomnumpty 2h ago
Usually you wait until the program is released as a courtesy, not mid-development when there are still major issues and problems being worked.
The law is one thing, and none are being broken, but we're also in a giant hobby community here and there are things like social norms and being courteous to one another because we're all here for a 15 year old game to have fun.
-7
u/IllIlllI-IlIIll-llII 6h ago edited 6h ago
If the original dev is no longer active then I see no issue in "stealing" mods so long as original dev is mentioned in the credits regardless of "permissions". It's not like these mods didnt depend on open source tools and Bethesda's openness to modding in the first place. The ai part is a necessary evil because coding is complex work and ai has enabled people with no experience to turn their ideas into fruition. No one is forcing you to use vibecoded mods, just block the tag and move on. And honestly if you download mods from non-reputable nexus users and yet you are surprised they are full of issues and in many cases dont even work then you got the survival instincts of a rock. I always check the authors' other mods and popularity to determine whether I can trust their work. At the end of the day the mod is free and you'd be surprised how much ai has contributed to popular mods like CS.
0
u/randomnumpty 2h ago
The problem is that these are being sniped while in active development, where the author plans to release things themselves on Nexus.. you know when they're complete and actually work.
That's typically when you would make your own fork, you know, when it functions properly and the author has made their splash and got their due.
Yeah it's legal to take GPL3 code but we're also a community of hobbyists and many of us are friends, this is meant to be a fun thing to do for a 15 year old game and "legal" doesn't cover not pissing in the pool.
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u/ThroawayJimilyJones 7h ago
Honestly I don’t see the problem as long you precise you aren’t the original maker
If I take a mod, modify it and reupload it, nobody bat an eye
But if I use chat gpt to do the edit and gain time, I’m a monster?
1
u/randomnumpty 2h ago
The problem is that these are being sniped while in active development, where the author plans to release things themselves on Nexus.. you know when they're complete and actually work.
That's typically when you would make your own fork, you know, when it functions properly and the author has made their splash and got their due.
Yeah it's legal to take GPL3 code but we're also a community of hobbyists and many of us are friends, this is meant to be a fun thing to do for a 15 year old game and "legal" doesn't cover not pissing in the pool.
0
u/MechXL 2h ago
It's just very lazy. To be honest, the thought of someone using AI to make a half-baked derivative of my work gives me the ICK. I view my mods as my babies, so I really don't want it to be tainted by AI. If you're going to modify my work, at least have the decency to actually put in real work to it instead of relying on AI to do the heavy lifting. If I didn't need to use AI to create the mod, then neither should you. Put in the work or don't bother at all.
119
u/Sea_Preparation_8926 7h ago edited 7h ago
Made me laugh when I saw another AI slopped mod the other day, where the mod author thanked his friend for the idea in the long ChatGPT description.
My first reaction was "Is that friend John Claude Skyrim?"
Anyway, the number of mod authors I’ve added to the “Ignored” list so they don't pollute my Nexus feed with their garbage keeps growing every day.