Generative AI Disclosure Tags for Uploaded Content

[JayTheCoderX]

Please confirm the following.

• I checked the existing issues for duplicate feature requests
• I have checked that this feature request is not on our roadmap

What parts of Modrinth is your feature request related too?

Modrinth.com website, Modrinth App

Is your suggested feature related to a problem? Please describe.

Currently, there is no way to easily identify or filter mods based on whether generative AI was used in their creation process. This includes mods that are fully AI-generated (e.g., via CreativeMode) as well as mods that contain partially or fully AI-generated assets or code.

Describe the solution you'd like

Implement new tags for mandatory disclosure of content generated in whole or in part by Generative AI models. These tags could be relatively precise. I'd recommend something along the lines of:

• Generated Content (Fully AI generated, without any human-made assets or code - such as mods and other content generated by platforms like CreativeMode.net)
• Generated Assets (Models, Textures, Sounds)
• Generated Code (assisted in any way or fully generated - there's some nuance here so it's worth discussing what counts and what doesn't such as simple AI assisted tab autocomplete)
• Generated Promotional Materials (Description, thumbnails, etc. - Any content that isn't part of the actual distributed content when loaded into the game)

Reports of untagged AI Generated content would not trigger penalties for the uploader if the content were uploaded before the implementation of these new guidelines - instead, reviewers could retroactively apply the appropriate tags.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Embrace AI to synergise and vertically integrate Minecraft datapacks.

In more serious terms, you could rely on third party community frontends or launchers to implement this or similar functionality. However, I believe something similar to what I've described (Exact implementation details are up to what people think is best) is probably the only way to directly solve this issue on the main website and official app - and by extension, for the average person using this platform.

Ignoring the problem entirely is also technically an option.

Additional context

Mockup:

Edit: Updated to include Modrinth App in feature request

[Prospector]

As you've hinted on, the line for what qualifies as AI generated especially for code is extremely fuzzy and can range from inline auto-complete to an entire feature being generated, to an entire mod of AI generated code. In my opinion, grouping all of those together would make an entirely meaningless category, and I don't have a good proposal for how you would define a line that would satisfy the users requesting this feature.

Another huge issue that was not touched on was how this would be moderated. In some cases, it can be relatively easy to tell AI content, but in other cases it is not clear-cut and would either rely on taking the uploader at their word or making the moderator take a subjective stance on if it "looks like" AI, the latter of which I take issue with. It would be horribly offensive to accuse a creator of using AI generated code or assets when they did not, and the moderation burden of making so many of these decisions would be a lot for our moderation team and further delay reviews of projects and add an entire new category of reportable offense to deal with.

Overall, I think it's a nice idea but I don't see a realistic path to implementing it. It could be implemented as an unmoderated tag, but I worry that creates an incentive to lie about AI usage while currently there is none.

I think in general this touches on the larger problem with Modrinth which is content discoverability. These AI projects are rarely successful and are usually only encountered when people sort by recently uploaded. This isn't a good way to find projects and never has been, and with or without AI people will fill it with garbage (and we never intend to gatekeep Modrinth to only high quality content).

In my view, the our resources are best spent making content discovery better by finding ways of uplifting and promoting high quality content on a rotating basis rather than keeping it sorted by all-time download count. This has the benefit of not only making it much less likely to encounter AI garbage, but also organic human-made garbage.

[JayTheCoderX]

As you've hinted on, the line for what qualifies as AI generated especially for code is extremely fuzzy and can range from inline auto-complete to an entire feature being generated, to an entire mod of AI generated code. In my opinion, grouping all of those together would make an entirely meaningless category, and I don't have a good proposal for how you would define a line that would satisfy the users requesting this feature.

What's AI generated for artwork at least is very simple as far as I'm concerned. AI code is - I'd classify as anything that uses code ... which has been generated by an AI. I'm being quite liberal here with what counts, because trying to draw a line in the middle is inherently very difficult.

My category mockup is an example of what it could look like, exact UI implementation is not particularly important.

Another huge issue that was not touched on was how this would be moderated. In some cases, it can be relatively easy to tell AI content, but in other cases it is not clear-cut and would either rely on taking the uploader at their word or making the moderator take a subjective stance on if it "looks like" AI, the latter of which I take issue with. It would be horribly offensive to accuse a creator of using AI generated code or assets when they did not, and the moderation burden of making so many of these decisions would be a lot for our moderation team and further delay reviews of projects and add an entire new category of reportable offense to deal with.

This is definitely the biggest issue. Some things help, for example mods generated by platforms such as CreativeMode.net include metadata that marks them as being from those platforms. However, I'd imagine the community is quite good at recognising at least AI art. As long as it's more of an occasional false negative instead of a false positive situation, I think we're good.

Overall, I think it's a nice idea but I don't see a realistic path to implementing it. It could be implemented as an unmoderated tag, but I worry that creates an incentive to lie about AI usage while currently there is none.

I think in general this touches on the larger problem with Modrinth which is content discoverability. These AI projects are rarely successful and are usually only encountered when people sort by recently uploaded. This isn't a good way to find projects and never has been, and with or without AI people will fill it with garbage (and we never intend to gatekeep Modrinth to only high quality content).

In my view, the our resources are best spent making content discovery better by finding ways of uplifting and promoting high quality content on a rotating basis rather than keeping it sorted by all-time download count. This has the benefit of not only making it much less likely to encounter AI garbage, but also organic human-made garbage.

I agree here, and your idea of improving discovery of high quality content is a great direction - but I still feel that any disclosure is better than nothing. There's no sign of there being less AI content in the future. Especially when browsing categories such as new, inherently you'll see more mods where less effort has been put in - just because there's more of them. These tags are useful because they allow you to filter at least some of these.

It's also worth noting that this isn't just mods, but also resource and datapacks.

[TheRedXD]

I want to add to this. Generative AI, as is right now, is extremely difficult to automatically detect, and even people mistake AI generated content for genuine. The tag, while providing a way to sort AI generated content, is difficult to enforce.

Perhaps there should be some badge or something (that is, the inverse of sorting by AI content), where confirmed human-made mods are shown? Or, @Prospector considering your aforementioned content discoverability issue, maybe there should be some Modrinth Approved badge or something similar (i.e. extremely high quality and high effort mods get shown, stuff like Sodium and similar, or Create, which are not one-off mods adding very basic items)? There are, of course, issues with this.

If people sort by the Modrinth Approved badge too often, it may lead to people not finding genuinely good mods which are niche, yet high quality. However, if the Modrinth Approved badge also gets handed out to smaller, but really good mods which have been getting maintained for a while, it may help increase their popularity.

Obviously, there are issues with my mentioned badge (excusing the naming).

If it becomes a way of increasing discoverability, this could result in abuse. For example, someone could work towards getting this badge, and once they do, their discoverability could massively increase. Now, they could potentially inject some form of malware that goes unnoticed (there are ways to do this, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are niche mods already on the Modrinth platform which do this, take a look at this video), and as such, the badge gets abused. I wouldn't say this is very likely to happen though.

Now, the naming of the badge is obviously up for debate, I'd say "Modrinth Approved" is quite a bad name, because that implies other mods aren't approved by Modrinth (even though that's clearly not the case). Maybe something like "Certified High-quality" or something similar would be better?

Not using AI could also potentially be something that is one of the requirements for obtaining the badge.

I reckon that this could be a helpful badge for people, however, as @Prospector mentioned:

(and we never intend to gatekeep Modrinth to only high quality content)

This badge has the potential issue that, if people always sort by it, it could result in people not seeing niche mods anymore. Then again, do you really need to make a sort category for it?

I believe that being able to sort by quality in some way is important. Perhaps higher quality uploads could be ranked higher in searches? There are several ways to implement this.

If implemented, this badge could rank higher quality content above lower quality content, and henceforth, making AI content less likely to show up. That's just my suggestion for helping to solve this issue though.

Deriving from my observations of the current generative AI situation in the creative industry, I believe that there should be a more enforceable method present to prevent AI usage in coding, just that there isn't one yet (perhaps built-in signing for editors making sure you're not generating code with AI?). This is technically feasible, but not easy and would require tremendous collaboration between several parties. Not something Modrinth by itself could ever achieve.