Make it more yours...

Obviously, as an organization, we are not anti-AI, but we aren't all in on the idea that every product needs AI features either. AI adds a silent cost to your product beyond the ever progressing gacha game of purchasing tokens and rolling the wheel of asset building until you get the right result. It silently hitches your product to one of the big AI models and the murky ethical and legal debates that go with it, so their ultimate fate is now yours. It also encourages things that we are completely philosophically opposed to, and that's letting a machine be creative for you.

As a small shop (see: solo organization with some really good friends), we use AI to accelerate production. It's unavoidable if we want our goals accomplished in the time frame and budget available, but we don't let that dictate direction, taste, or creative vision. We'd rather build tools that ultimately don't need AI to function, because at the end of the day, we want to see what YOU make with our tools. (It's why you can use it for free as a hobbyist). If there's some AI assets in there, we don't care (and we get it), but somewhere in there, we want to see humans making things for humans and not machines making things for nameless masses.

Don't stop learning. Don't stop reaching. Don't stop dreaming. It takes a while to amass the skills needed to show it to everyone else. If you need to use AI in the mean time to do that, do so, but don't abandon your goal of adding even just one more part of what makes you you to the end result. We won't shame you for it, and we won't criticize you for it. Make something awesome... period. Then make it more yours as you can.

Some things we do will always have an AI component. For instance, did you know that on our Discord channel, you can ask Crash-tan questions about Crash BASIC? For us, this is a meaningful use and won't go away as long as we can support it, but those uses are extremely limited in scope. (If you signed up and aren't there, you are missing out on the ability to influence how the language and platform evolves!)

So, to lead the way, as the founder, I have a stretch goal, and you all can keep me accountable. Crash-tan started as my ridiculous sketches, designs, and whimsical idea of what a super powered daughter would be like if I had one. She's become the heart and soul of what we are doing here. So I'm committing to a zero AI graphic art goal for Crash-tan by the end of 2026. Her lyrics are human written, her design is human made.

It's time for her art to match...