NodeWorld is an independent project with no budget. This charter sets out our position on artificial intelligence, how we use it today, and what we do to avoid encouraging its use.

Why we do not encourage it

The environment

Generative AI is an environmental disaster. The data centres that run it consume huge amounts of electricity and water, and their hardware has to be manufactured and then replaced.

Artists

The models are trained on the work of artists who never consented to it, and they weaken creative professions.

AI slop

AI makes it easy to mass-produce careless content, which floods platforms and makes careful work harder to find. We are opposed to it.

What we do to avoid encouraging it

Not a selling point

We never present AI as an asset of NodeWorld, nor as an argument to promote it.

Not an example to follow

Our current use is a constraint imposed by the budget, not a method we advise. We do not want it to serve as an example.

How we use it today

Creative work

Without a budget, we use AI for part of the creative work we cannot yet commission from artists. We avoid image generation models as much as possible.

Code

AI also helps us write code. That code is always reviewed before it is merged.

Quality

Quality remains our priority. Everything we publish is chosen, checked and, where needed, reworked by a person. Content that does not meet the expected standard is not published.

The place of artists

Commissioning artists

As soon as the budget allows, we will hand the creative work over to artists, paid fairly. Content made with AI until then will be replaced.

Respecting their work

We do not ask AI to imitate the style of a specific artist.

Work made with the help of AI

The question of transparency

Stating that a piece of work was made with the help of AI is a delicate matter: it often exposes the person concerned to harassment, even when the work was done with care. We take this question seriously and do not claim to have a simple answer to it. Harassment is never an acceptable response.

Recognising good work

We believe that good work made with the help of AI deserves to be appreciated, under certain conditions: a person must genuinely be behind it, through their ideas, choices and rework; it must not reproduce someone else’s work; and it must be of real quality. This obviously does not apply to AI slop, and recognising the quality of a piece of work does not mean encouraging the use of AI.

How this charter will change

This charter will be updated as the project and its budget evolve, towards less reliance on AI.