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As you'll hopefully be aware, here at Time Extension we believe that a healthy community is paramount if the world of games media is going to survive and thrive in the current AI-driven landscape.
According to a recent report, half of what is posted online is now created by AI – AI that has been trained on human-made content without permission and is now being used to replace real, human-made websites with automated slop. That is unfortunately the battleground independent sites like ours find themselves in; GenAI has enabled people to steal content effortlessly and regurgitate it instantly without having to actually pay people.
I don't like calling out other websites on their work practices – I'd much rather celebrate the world of games media at the moment – but there's one outlet in particular that has come under fire for using GenAI in pretty much every element of its production process, and it has now been singled out by a developer mentioned in one of its seemingly AI-written news articles.
The outlet in question is GenerationAmiga. and the dev is Besky / BlindRedDog, who is working on a PC recompilation of Sonic and the Black Knight, originally released on the Nintendo Wii.
GenerationAmiga has become infamous lately for its use of GenAI, and this has led some people on social media to assume that Besky is OK with the same tech being used in their recomp – something the developer has had to publicly deny.
"As the developer of this project, I want to make a comment," Besky said on social media. "I have no connection to this article. Thanks for sharing, but I do not support genAI. The project does not involve the use of genAI or AI-assisted coding. I am only writing the code myself using AI for research purposes."
The tweet in question has now been 'community noted' to point out that the image is GenAI, and the replies have been predictably hostile. GenerationAmiga's tweets usually get a handful of comments; this one has over 130 replies at the time of writing.
Now, I will admit I'm not an expert, but a brief glance at GenerationAmiga's homepage is enough to make me pretty confident that the site is almost entirely created using GenAI. The images clearly are, and the text has all the hallmarks of GenAI – lots of waffle with very little substance.
Need convincing? GenerationAmiga recently "reviewed" the SNES homebrew game Alisha’s Adventure, but the review admitted it was based solely on the game's YouTube trailer.
Here are some more of the site's suspect lead images:
Why does this matter? Well, while many people are discerning enough to recognise slop when they see it, others don't seem to be quite as picky. Once people have the information, why do they need to read another outlet, human-made or not?
After all, you could easily argue that we repost and report second-hand information here on Time Extension, too – is there any difference? To that question, I would point out that GenAI content is riddled with mistakes and often completely misses historical context – using it in this kind of way is a sign of laziness, in my opinion.
Then there's the aforementioned issue that this content is being generated using the knowledge and work of other people, while failing to credit them properly or offer any kind of compensation.
Here at Time Extension, we are totally against the use of GenAI and believe that humans want to read human-made content. If you agree, please support the site by reading and sharing our articles (and telling us when we get things right or wrong) and avoid using sites that clearly have zero respect for their readers.