Table of contents
Site Code AI Disclosure
The TASVideos site code currently contains a very small amount of human-reviewed agentic code, committed before our stance was discussed and this page was drafted and finalized. In accordance with our official stance and this resulting policy, however, our developers have pledged to not use agentic code on the site at all going forward.
TASVideos Staff AI Stance
TASVideos does not support generative AI and LLM usage. We have committed to not using it ourselves, and encourage our userbase to do the same.
Our stance has been influenced by factors such as the environmental impact caused by data centers, the ethical concerns of data-scraping for model training, and the legal concerns of plagiarism over any piece of generated text or media. We also believe that reliance on generative AI erodes and destroys communities by discouraging the human cooperation and collaboration that fuels this hobby. Our stance will not change unless these factors are mitigated.
However, as a large community that relies both on outside software and user-submitted content in order to function, we cannot fully eliminate all usage of LLMs or generative AI that may ever appear on the site. We understand that there are objective benefits to the technology and that banning it outright would damage the site considerably: Emulators we already support and services we rely on for outreach have openly allowed or even fully embraced generative AI, so a full boycott would be a huge blow to our ability to operate.
As such, we have come up with a policy for our users that we feel best balances the needs of the community with the principles of our stance:
User AI Policy
Restrictions
- Above all other rules, any user attempting to use this site to profit financially off of AI/LLM generation will be immediately and permanently banned. This is non-negotiable.
- Media (non-text) generation, including but not limited to images, videos, and music, will be removed on sight, and users posting it may be moderated if deemed necessary.
- Wiki pages must not contain AI-generated content of any kind.
- Any files uploaded to the site, such as submissions or UserFiles, must not contain AI-generated content of any kind.
- Submission texts must not contain any AI-generated content, with one exception for machine translations. Machine translations must be accompanied by the original, untranslated text.
- Any attempt to exploit or circumvent these rules will be taken as bad faith, and will be moderated accordingly. Loopholes should be reported privately, not field tested.
Allowances and Disclosure
- Disclosure is required for all allowed usage.
- AI-generated scripts and tools may still be used in the process of creating an input file as long as the input itself is free of generative AI. Once again, these tools must also not be uploaded to the site.
- Usage of LLM-assisted accessibility tools such as machine translators and automatic speech recognition (speech-to-text) software is allowed with minor caveats:
- Machine translations must also include the original, untranslated text to ensure no information was mistranslated or lost.
- Speech-to-text users are responsible for ensuring their posts are their own, accurately transcribed words.
- All currently acceptable emulators will remain acceptable even if they adopt agentic code.
- Non-agentic forms of generative AI, such as neural networks and other machine learning algorithms, are still allowed.
- Discussion of generative AI and LLMs is allowed as long as you abide by the Site Rules when doing so, and as long as it is not your sole purpose for being a part of this site.
- We would like to ask Discord users to limit their discussion to the dedicated thread in #general, out of courtesy for those who do not wish to engage with it at all.
Extra Clarifications
AI as a Term
TASVideos, as a gaming community, has used and will frequently continue to use "AI" in multiple different, non-generative contexts. Our stance and this policy do not apply to these uses, only to LLM-based, generative, and/or otherwise agentic uses. These three terms are used interchangeably throughout this page as catch-alls.
Moderation
Removals of AI-generated text or media will come coupled with reminders of this policy. These reminders are not meant to be taken as full warnings unless explicitly stated as such by a moderator or admin. Full warnings will usually come after multiple reminders, or if the user is breaking other rules at the same time.
While discussion of generative AI is allowed, we are a retro gaming and speedrunning community first and foremost. Your sole purpose for being here should not be to discuss, defend, or decry generative AI.
Legal Concerns
Due to the way LLMs are trained, plagiarism is effectively both inherent and inevitable in all AI-generated content. Should we knowingly host such material, we put ourselves at risk of legal repercussion.
Misinformation Concerns
TASVideos also serves as a knowledge base for those who are interested in retro game mechanics and speedrunning. As such, accurate information is critical to user experience, and generative AI lacks the context, knowledge, and humanity required to provide that.
Accurate information is also critical to site operation when it comes to submissions, as any misinformation can impact our judging and publishing workflow in trying to figure out what's wrong with the provided information.
No-AI Alternatives
For those of you who wish to completely avoid AI-powered software, here are some curated collections: