As you are probably aware, this sub bans AI-generated music. However, we do not have a policy on AI-assisted software/tools, including "vibe-coded" software.
There is every possibility someone with little to no coding experience could have a fantastic idea and show up with an amazing program that streamlines some aspect of chiptune composition or recording, or gives access to an obscure sound chip. There are a lot of promising possibilities there.
AI-assistance is also increasingly standard practice in the software industry. There's no escaping it. Trying to ban it altogether seems like a losing battle.
However, the problem is that it is now *so* easy to have AI create software that we are seeing submissions at an increasing rate. This sub has gone from seeing maybe one or two new pieces of chiptune software *a month* to seeing multiple submissions a day sometimes. I think we're up to 5 this week (and it's Wednesday at the time of writing lol).
The issue, as I see it, is not necessarily AI, but one of a signal-to-noise ratio. I'm sure some of the stuff submitted in the past month or two has been fine projects, but some of it is junk created on a whim destined to be abandoned by the creator a week after they post it. Those posts do nothing to help the chiptune community and only serve to clog the sub and bury potentially good projects.
We have rules in place to try and help improve discussion and try and tamp down on low-effort posts, and we need to extend those to include software submissions. I have added a new rule to the sidebar:
We welcome new chiptune software, including AI-assisted projects, but submissions should explain what the tool does, what makes it useful or interesting, and why it might be relevant to the community. Projects that offer little beyond functionality already available in established tools, or that appear minimally tested or poorly developed, may be removed as low-effort submissions.
I personally do not have any sort of background in coding or software development, and the mod team does not have time to do a deep dive on every software submission to evaluate the quality of the project. Rather, we will be looking at the posts themselves. If a post says something like "I made this with Claude because it seemed cool," we're going to remove it. Posts need to explain why the project exists, why the community might be interested in it, how it is useful, etc. Sharing something you created on a whim is of interest to no one, so keep it to yourself.
We are going to be asking ourselves questions like these when evaluating a submission:
- Is it clearly relevant to chiptune?
- Does the post explain a meaningful use, feature, experiment, or reason for existing?
- Does the submission give people enough information to understand why they might want to try or discuss it?
If you feel a post doesn't live up to these standards, please use the report button!
And if these posts become more frequent, we might want to add another mod with software development expertise just to help police them.
