Tabitha

@omgtabby.bsky.social

Lvl 40 Queer creator in the Northern Midwest, formerly PNW. No AI, human art only. My art in icon/banner. she/her https://www.goodreads.com/omgtabby

Over the past month, IGF judges and jurists have had intense, difficulty, generous, and deeply engaged conversations about AI and the games industry. This statement is the result of those conversations.

This year's IGF entries have been incredible. We've been lucky to play games that surprise, connect, and challenge us, and we're excited to vote for our favorites.

Unfortunately, there has also been a significant increase in the number of submitted games developed with generative AI tools. This has set off some fairly intense discussion and disagreement across the judge and jury pools, and at this point there is no universal consensus on what (if anything) is to be done.

The IGF has affirmed that we may cast our votes according to our own tastes and values. But we, a contingent of IGF jurors, feel that this trend and the games embracing it deserve stronger pushback than a vote in silence.

While IGF leadership has approved the release of this statement, it's important to note that we do not speak for IGF as an organization, or for all IGF jury members. Many jurors had differing perspectives and significant reservations about this statement. Some jurists additionally voiced concern about their ability to safely sign without professional blowback, and we do not intend this letter to serve as a censure of those who were unable to sign.

Above all: Our goal is to state solidarity with those who despair over the future of their art, their craft, and their industry—including those who have experimented with these tools in the past, but who now believe they are not in our best interest.

We know that change does not come at the individual level, but as independent developers, we also know firsthand the value of pushing back on what an industry has deemed "inevitable." As jurists, we feel a responsibility to push past defeatism and aspire to a higher ideal.

The future is not yet settled. You are not alone. We can stand together.We, the undersigned IGF jury members, believe the following:

1. That generative AI has these negative effects:
Ecological harms at community and planetary levels
Economic harms to working developers and artists
Cognitive and psychological harms to its users
Harm to the increasingly fragile information landscape
Harms to labor and worker power in creative fields

2. That these harms do not depend on what is generated, be it music or writing, art or VO, marketing assets or code.

3. That AI-generated code is not an exception to these harms. Programming is a creative discipline whose labour deserves the same respect we extend to any part of making a game. This extends to the past work used to train these models without the creators' consent.

4. Finally, that the use of these tools is neither a foregone conclusion in our industry nor that their adoption has been wholly voluntary. We stand in solidarity not only with those developers who have the freedom to unilaterally reject them, but also with those who have been compelled by their employers to adopt their use, those working to establish or improve their workplace policies, and especially with those in positions of precarity who are so often those most pressured to abandon their values.

For these reasons, this year we are declining to vote for any game that uses generative AI in any capacity. We urge the IGF to adopt a strong anti-AI policy for future years that disallows games containing any AI-generated work.

A.M. Darke
aurahack
Aura Triolo
Austin Walker
Brendon Chung
Brent Arnold
Dan Floyd
Everest Pipkin
Gianna Ruggiero
isaac io schankler
Johnnemann Nordhagen
Lena Raine
Marielle Kho
Megan Fox
Noel Berry
Osama Dorias
Sam Barlow
Tamara Duplantis
Taylor Mccue

Alright it’s lunch break call your reps power hour aka “I overcame my struggles with task initiation to spend 6 min telling my reps to back new leadership & defend trans rights”o’clock Call your reps, fax em, email. No excuses. The work didn’t stop Tuesday

Screenshot of call log showing phone calls to Senator Schiff, Sen, Padilla, and representative Friedman
Greg Pak@gregpak.net · last wk.

Hey, friends! Money where my mouth is time - PLEASE call your Democratic reps and senators and tell them to publicly REJECT any anti-trans words or policies espoused by anti-trans Democrats elect like @joshturek4iowa.bsky.social! Gotta head this shit off. gregpak.net/2026/11/04/c...

Black pen writing on blue lined paper that reads "Call your Democratic reps and tell them to PROTECT TRANS PEOPLE! reps.fyi"

I never get to use the #sciart tag because I never finish anything, but I did recently complete this watercolor of Euphorbia multiceps. I am slow so it took me about 5 months from sketch to "finish" (I had a deadline so it's "done" in that regard, but I don't think I'm 100% finished with it yet)

A watercolor of a green cone-like succulent Euphorbia with persistent peduncles coming out the top

My mom went to some sort of estate sale/swap?? and one of the deceased was an artist. She had no idea what these were but thought maybe I would like them and bought them as a surprise. Yes mama, I like them very much!!

A set of five Pantone color guides

I have three pairs of pants like these, wear on the insides of BOTH thighs (the others are MUCH worse), that I haven't worn for three years. I knew I could salvage them but didn't know how, and then a pair of sweats I was going to toss and sashiko mending happened. I love these pants even more now.

A piece of pink fabric with holes.A piece of pink fabric with running stitches over the holes, mending themA piece of gray fleece attached to pink fabric with running stitches