Before we start, it’s important to note that Waypoint Studios’ creator blog does not use AI to write blog posts or content. We also do not use AI to create any Minecraft marketplace skin pack, map, or other product you may see from us.
At Waypoint Studios, we want our information to be freely and widely accessible, so we launched our Creator Blog. We wanted to do it in a way that allowed us to write posts easily and conveniently. We also didn’t want to limit anyone’s access to the information we share. That meant we had a few things to consider.
- Accessibility to information
- Cost to access the information
We thought about how we could do this and decided to look to AI to provide some solutions to the main problems we were facing. For 1, accessibility, all our blog posts use OpenAI to narrate the blog post in audio form for any creators with poor eyesight or who just simply don’t or can’t read long bodies of text. Then, for 2, we had to consider the cost. The creator blog is a free-to-everyone platform where we share our 10+ years of information and knowledge. We wanted it to always be that way, and yes, whilst it costs us a bit of money to do this, we wanted to keep costs somewhat low. We can’t afford to host a blog where each article costs hundreds of dollars to make and produce, so we looked to AI for image generation.
AI-Generated Images
We decided to use OpenAI’s DALL-E image generation for blog post articles. We looked to AI to generate images for the blog for one simple reason. Getting custom art for every post every time would limit the amount of content we could write about and the speed at which we could share knowledge. If we waited on a render each time, that would take approximately 5-10 days for each image, and some posts can have 4 or 5 images. That would stop us from releasing articles to you in a meaningful way, and it would also make the Creator blog unsustainable. We do not use AI-generated images in any product online.
What about the writing?
While our images are AI-generated, we categorically do not use AI to write our blog posts. The only approved tool our writers use is Grammarly to check spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Grammarly does contain some AI elements to rewrite certain bits, but it relies on already-written content.
We commit to never accepting or publishing blog posts we know or suspect to be written in whole or in part by AI.
AI-Generated Narration
We use OpenAI’s text-to-speech tool to convert all articles into audio and listen along. We believe that high-quality information should be available for all creators, and we must recognize that neurodivergent and hard-of-sight creators may struggle to read and concentrate on big walls of text. To make our handwritten posts as inclusive as possible, we used audio narration to read them.
Why are we telling you this?
We think it’s important to acknowledge that AI is used on our site. We understand that not everyone agrees with it, and for the most part, we share that feeling. AI is not a tool to replace artists, and it is not a tool that can be used to lower quality standards. We use AI as a way to make things that are unachievable or unrealistic without it. When we first pitched the idea of our creator blog to our team, we explained the need for AI-generated images and talked with our in-house art team about the quantity we would need for those images, and they agreed that production on that level wouldn’t be possible. We, therefore, had two choices: use AI to create images that are used in our handwritten blog posts or don’t launch the creator blog.
We hope that the quality of the content in our blog allows you to improve and understand the creator economy of working within Minecraft. We understand that AI is still a divisive thing among artists and creators, but we hope that the usefulness of our blog allows you to understand why we made the compromises we had to make.
What do you use?
- We use DALL-E for all image generation
- We also use OpenAI’s Text to Speech to create the audio versions of all our posts.
