Lol i Hope you dont really believe anyone cares about Your opinion :D  Who are you even?

Let me first apologize for the wall of text, but i am not willing to make it shorter. So double sorry.

I don't have any issue with AI generated content. And I'm a person  (one of many) that is not 'tired' of that content. So, you know, don't pretend you are representing others. And talking about your points:

'unethical: uses other people's art, writing, photos from social media, without their consent' 

while it's true that most of models are trained on copyrighted material. The art styles (anime, ghibly, photo, 3d, etc),literature genres (like horror, sci fi, etc) and so on. Can not be copyrighted. The crime is pirating content to create the model, but that doesn't make the model unlegal, the same that doesn't made an artist a criminal because he learned drawing watching pirated manga. And while they may not be popular, there are models trained with CC0/public domain content.

'*takes jobs from artists, writers and musicians'

 50/50. While it is a new technology that apparently does a lot of stuff, the truth is that while the quality may be acceptable, you still need the technical art knowledge (color theory, music theory, composition, editing and so on) to create something good with it. It ease weight off the shoulders to professional and small creators, but it's doesn't fully replace. And by the way, you then may wanna come with (but x company fires n amount of exployees) yeah. But those professionals where fired by idiot bosses not AI itself. If they are good, they will (and pretty much are) hired by other companies of the same ones they where fired, when all begin to fall down.

'*unoriginal: no human creativity or insight used to create it'

 And how you know something is original or not? look at all art humanity created since the dawn of days, and you will see it's all references, representations and remixes of existing things to say the least. Tolkien didn't create the fantasy genre, Terminator wasn't the first 'evil robot' (in fact, Skynet is based in AM) and so on. What we understand as creative and original, in the end is just a uncommon remix.

'*wastes tons of electricity and water to run the data centers' 

Same datacenters that holds mail services, video streaming (and any other types of streaming), wikipedia, and pretty much all (in fact,  the water is not 'destroyed forever' but evaporated to the air (forming clouds and so on), you know, water cycle) Also, you have local AI's that work in consumer hardware and are less energy demanding and don't use water for refrigeration.

'*the data centers are built by clearcutting tons of land that used to be home to many native plants and animals who now have been displaced from their habitats' 

Dude (or girl) same as pencil and paper, and don't forget that to create pencils you need to also mine the graphite out of the earth.  (in fact, pencil and paper can be even worse, since you had to chop more trees to create more.)

'*in the US, laid-off workers are being paid diminishing fees to train the algorithms that are replacing them.' 

I don't  know about it, but sounds hard to believe.  how that is suppose works? 'Hey employee, train for me your permanent replacement I'll pay you 5 bucks... yes yes my boss.'   sorry, but that sounds like something that somebody who never had a job before would say. or the yellow press. Besides, don't you think that AI is not autonomous and need to be used by somebody (and the bigger the project/company the more people needed) Basically, creating more jobs in the process?

'*using generative ai, both by generating images and by generating text causes AI psychosis and degrades critical thinking, and makes people lose touch with reality' 

By the love of... where the heck you got that sh** from? do you realize is the same kind of things boomers and yellow press says about video-games right? And who knows... there may be rare cases of isolation where that happens, similar to games? yes, but exceptions are not the rule. (And it won't help anybody itch banning AI anyway)

'*Using AI to create writing and then putting your name on the final product  is plagiarism'

Yes, but depends. Did the AI wrote the entire thing? yes, in that case it's like using an LLM as ghost witter. Writing something by your own and use it as cheap-ass editor/translator? in that case no. And in fact, not anybody has money to pay an editor/translator, so...

'*It fabricates disinformation'

 While the AI hallucinate (something that doesn't happens all time and is comparable to when a person confuse) disinformation, fake news and hoaxes are made and deliberately distributed by people. The best way of fight disinformation, i think, is encouraging investigations, double checks or simply avoid blind credulity.  (like with any scam) but know this. If AI didn't exists, misinformation would still exists like it always did. 

 '*the engines that run generative AI are used by p3d0philes to create CP' 

Despicable yes, but is not either the intended use or the majority of the usage it's given. And is not different as Photoshop, perhaps easier to use yes, but like i said 'not either the intended use or the majority of the usage it's given'. If you wanna fight AI because that, then you should also be agaisnt Photoshop or any other photo editing program and even H artists.  Also... seriously? you put anything in the same bag without hesitation?, okay then let's ban all games because engines can be used for CP as well... and traditional artists because pen and paper can also be used to do the same things.

In summary, AI is a powerful tool for solo devs and small teams that can ease prototyping and development. And there is no such thing as a 'AI made' game (like the whole game made) games are made by persons, AI helps in the development either by music, code, graphics or even quick searching in the documentation. There are bad games, yes, like always, but not all games made with AI are bad nor all made fully by humans are good. Slop existed always and it will always exists. 

I am not defending AI as is. But the problem with thinking who should and should not publish games in any place doesn't help anybody. There are good ideas out there that people without funds, help or deep knowledge can't make by themselves, and banning the AI in the end only benefits those with enough resources (money, free time, etc.)

Or perhaps the real issue is not preventing 'bad art' but you want to avoid having competition?  (don't reply, that's a lame ass provocation from my side)

Sorry. I know i sounded energetic and ranting (and narcissist as heck, sue me.) And I am agree with you if the issue is the over-flood of low quality games like some indie version of the shovelwares. And i'm agree that we (as community) will need some kind of solution eventually, and i'm not your enemy, know that.  But banning any  project based on what tech it was used to created it, it's an starting awful choice. 

Your reasons are not good enough. Some are not relevant, some simply wrong. You need better arguments against ai.

I do not like ai slop. That is because I do not like slop. And the ai slop publishers spam that content. It is a nuisance and Itch should do something against this. There are accounts that publish several games a days. That is not ok. 

But I have no issues with hobby developers using ai to develop some games. AI enables them to overcome a hurdle. Not unlike using a game engine does.

So let's analyze your reasons:

unethical: uses other people's art, writing, photos from social media, without their consent

So? I just used your writing without your explicit consent. I used it to write this post. Unless there is a legal grounds for this "unethical" thing, this is just your opinion that this would be unethical. Also there is things like fair use where people can use things without consent. Consent is not the defining attribute what is allowed and what is not allowed. Or what is ethical.

Plus, an ai user is not even using the art of other people. You could make an argument that some ai models were built with suspicious training methods. But the things created by those models are in fact not the other people's art.

And to water your argument further down, you cannot even prove that all ai models use unconsented data. You might find some models. But if you do search, you will also find models that use consented data. A trivial example is that there are audio models where they hired people to speak. How is that unconsented?! 

*takes jobs from artists, writers and musicians

In the professional sector, yes. That's a problem not only for the arts.

In the hobby sector? You say the people that use a free game engine and have no budget for anything would pay for artists? 

*unoriginal: no human creativity or insight used to create it

That's wrong. With the exception of ai agents maybe. But if you have ever tried to use an ai, you would know that this is simply a wrong statement. Your creativity is not the same creativity. It is a different skill. For visuals, it is similar to the comparison between taking a photograph and drawing a picture. It's different skills.

Now, for the slop games, that's kinda true. But using ai as such is not the key element here. It is effort put into the project. If you tell your ai agent: make me a game, that's zero insight. If you use an ai to generate your assets or help you code, that is still you and you decide what assets to use and what the game is about. Using ai is not 0% or 100% creativity.

Plus, people copying another game and not putting creativity into a game is not something people need ai for. They can create slop and copycats all on their own. This point is not limited to ai. It's just easier to do this with ai.

*wastes tons of electricity and water to run the data centers

That's not true. You equate the industry usage of ai to the personal usage of ai. I did try a local ai system and used it to create a few images. I wanted to know what this is all about. Know what? The system could generate an image every few seconds. On my own computer.

And for comparison: running a graphics intensive game a few seconds would use the same amount of electricity.

Use this argument against crypto currency. But for indie game assets it is just wrong.

It might hold up for some devs that use ai companies to code and have to buy those ai usage tokens. That can get costly very quickly for larger projects. But even here you can make an argument of money: the companies selling this service will ask an equivalent price for hardware and electricity used. If it is tons of electricity but you only have to pay peanuts, that does not add up.

*the data centers are built by clearcutting tons of land that used to be home to many native plants and animals who now have been displaced from their habitats

Same as before. Use it against crypto and use it against industry usage of ai. For indie games it does not scale.

*in the US, laid-off workers are being paid diminishing fees to train the algorithms that are replacing them. 

Use this against industry usage. Same argument could and should be used for outsourcing work to other countries.

A glimmer of hope is here, because some companies actually lose money becaues they tried to replace workers with ai.

*using generative ai, both by generating images and by generating text causes AI psychosis and degrades critical thinking, and makes people lose touch with reality

That's not an argument against games made with help on ai on an inde game platform.

That's an argument against using ai chatbots to solve your personal problems. And I agree for the critical thinking. But you lost me there on the ai psychosis.

You need to roughly know the answer if you ask an ai. And you cannot trust its answers. AI will happily lie to you and they can hallucinate and invent facts. They are not thinking. They simulate giving an answer that will look like it fits the question. 

*Using AI to create writing and then putting your name on the final product  is plagiarism 

No, it is not. If you use ai to recreate an existing work to a very similar degree, that is plagiarism.

Your argument tried to use the same aspect as the unethical usage. It can only hold true, if the unethical one holds true, and it does not.

Whom would you even plagiarise? AI have no copyright for their output. You cannot steal their output from them.

And if you create works that infringe on other people's work, that is forbidden no matter how you achieved the result. If you did this by ai or by hand does not matter.

Using ai and claiming you wrote this all by yourself would be undisclosed ai usage, deception, depending on context academic dishonesty or whatever. But not plagiarism.

*It fabricates disinformation 

Not really. It fabricates things that look like answers to a question. If the question asker then distributes that answer as truth, that can be disinformation. But ai do not intentionally fabricate disinformation. They are certainly used to intentionally create and spread disinformation. But this is people doing it.

*the engines that run generative AI are used [by criminals] to create [bad things]

This is about the most trivial and nonsensical approach to villify a tech. If you accept this argument, you will need to ban pen & paper, computers, breathing air, the internet itself, electricity and to be sure: humans. Also, this would actually not be the thing you described, but a fictional thing. And fictional things are ... well ... fictional. If I kill you in Call of Duty, you would not call me a killer.

With over the top nonsensical arguments you will not convince anyone. Try to tailor it to the topic. Not try to argue here for something that was rejected in courts. AI training is not illegal. And the environmental arguments would go against the computers that players use to play the games as well. Or for Itch itself, because of all the hosting and serving over a million projects. If you cherry pick bad aspects to only apply to ai, this will be a weak argument. And easily picked apart. You do not want that.

You want future proof arguments. For Itch, that might be the slop and spam aspect. Some publishers do this and Itch should do something here. /t/6959561/ai-agent-usage-on-itch

Firstly, you go around calling perfectly fine games AI Slop, just because they use AI.

AI slop is only low quality, clearly horrible, AI generated work. 

Any AI restrictions will cause the real sloppers to not disclose their AI usage.

I am not going to write a wall of text:

My suggestion is to mandate the quality guidelines for publishing instead of indexing, only changing it to:

expanding it to require a description, and custom theme, and remove the itch.io review for basic publishing.

/docs/creators/getting-indexed#publishing-vs-indexing/getting-ind...

Nope. AI used correctly is a wonderful tool for gamedevs. If you're for example a good writer but can't draw, why not use AI art. If you're an artist who can't code, why not let ChatGPT teach you the ropes of Unity and scripting.

Takes jobs? To a degree. But I can't afford to hire artists for my project anyway, so no jobs are lost. If I can get an MVP version out the door and fundraise enough money I'll happily commission actual artwork, but as it is, without AI I wouldn't be able to make my game.

Unoriginal: depends entirely on the creativity that goes into the prompts. If I just say 'generate me a character for my rpg', obviously no human thought goes into that. If I already have a character in mind and tell the AI how to generate her profile picture, and then keep at it until she looks the way  I envision her, that's definitely a creative project.

Power-intensive: Yup, and AI generation should probably require a monthly subscription fee, as should probably a lot more services around the Web. Maybe it should cost money to upload vids to YouTube, too.  I don't see why that's a reason AI content should be banned from Itch.io, though.

Plagiarism: If you don't credit the AI for the part it's done, sure, and by all means, kick the people who get caught using AI without crediting it. 

Not bothering to reply to your more reaching points.

Also:

"People are getting tired of all the generative ai slop being posted. We want human made games. "
If you really believed that, why even petition for a ban? AI-generated content would die out naturally.

After coding for many years, I have discovered that the English language is in fact, the best programming language. I don't think I will be stopping, thank you.

I don't like it either. There are a ton of random low quality 'tools' and 'games' flooding itch and some I've seen seem to exist for the express purpose of trying to sell AI generated crap on other sites. It makes it harder to find good stuff when browsing for new stuff. I could get behind what you're trying to advocate for here if the arguments you're presenting were more relevant to the user experience on itch. I agree with the sentiment here, but I think we need to stick to making arguments that are directly relevant to why its bad for itch. I hate seeing lazy work made with no real care dumped onto the internet as much as the next person, but some of the points in your post are only going to stoke the flames because they have nothing to do with itch or game dev directly (regardless of weather I agree or not).  

I think itch and most of the web in general would be better off without all the AI slop pollution for enough more relevant reasons anyway.
It makes the experience worse for people who want to find good games / tools without having to wade through low quality crap
A lot of fully AI generated content is made solely to try and profit without putting in work / made for disingenuous reasons  

I've come across 'games' that are essentially just click through AI generated image slideshows where the creator is only posting to try and get people to an amazon affiliate link site/red bubble store to sell AI gen crap. It takes eyes off of projects people made who put real work in to actually make a game. That sucks . All that said, AI "being used by bad people to do bad thing sometimes" is not a real argument. 

There are developers who use AI in ways that I think are fine and should be allowed btw. My beef is with lazy fully generated nonsense. If someone prompts claude with errors or uses a bit of AI while writing code that theyre reviewing that is not the sort of thing id argue against.