A.I and the demoscene

First of all I would like to apologize, because I don’t use my English skills in daily, and could be rusty… and I have almost 22 month little girl, so my brain often too tired, but I’ll try my best.

In August 2023 after Assembly demoparty I saw something strange on Facebook. It looked like somebody using A.I. on Future Crew – Second Reality. It was a bit creepy to me and suddenly I got nausea, and not from that I couldn’t sleep properly for 1-2 month (8 hours of sleep without interruption). I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was dissapointed and heartbroken.

For you, who don’t know me, Hello! I’m Vickey, I was a party oragnizer in several demopartys (mostly Hungarian and German) from 2000 to 2019. In my early years in that creative community I realized somehow I just couldn’t make anything. No music, no graphics, and of course I couldn’t code… (still don’t). But I was watching compos with awe, my jaw dropped and sometimes I couldn’t believe my eyes what I saw on the big screen it was massive eyecandy for me. That my cool friends what can do in 256 bytes, in 64k, with old computer like C64 and Amiga. Limitation boost the creativity and also it affected me during the demopartys, it helped me to find my „creative beingness”. (I usually plan my life in parties with my friends)

Early this year, in January I saw on Demoscene server in #general that the demoscene and the A.I are in the same sentence and coulnd’t believe my eyes that it is a hot topic. HOW? and WHY? Why isn’t just ban all A.I products in the compos? Doesn’t make sense for me. Even there are some voices that saying „Ignore the AI ​​haters because the day is not far off when they too will use it.” OK, but if that is the case they will liquidate the foundation of the demoscene: the creativity, the aestetics, joyful competitions, and the friendships. Because I’m not sure that we can compare that prod that they make in months with someone who just write 10-15 words for A.I.’s prompt. I know that demoparty’s audience is not stupid, it value the true, competent, hard working creations. At least I hope.

My worst nightmare has came true, Revision demoparty had some work that containtains some A.I. works. I was speechless, and I couldn’t confront that it can happen with this community. That’s why I write this post, because I feel that I can’t take it anymore…. this is nail in the demoscene’s coffin. Ok, we say that the demoscene is dead, but this time it will really will die if we don’t do something about it.

If something miracle happen to me and making music in 3-4 years, I wouldn’t enter for a competition in demoparty or I woulnd’t let my daughter to do that too. Because as a newbie can’t compete with some massive machine.

So my conclusion is that I don’t wanna organise demopartys that let this A.I thing happens in their competions, because this isn’t in my values so it seems I won’t go back to have partying as an Infodesk orga in Revision…. :/