After having taken some time to read over the concerns and issues brought up by people in the thread, alongside my own history with the site, I feel like it’s appropriate for me to weigh in on the topic.
It’s only natural that people would take the integrity and quality of a place that allows them to share their passions very seriously, of course. While I only rarely participate in active communication myself (and only relatively recently made an account compared to my active time using and browsing the site), I’ve been able to bear witness to the development of the culture and practices that take place on it. With that in mind, it’s good to remember that it’s a shared passion, and everyone here agrees on the same central point of wanting to maintain that community and quality.
Generally speaking, I believe the primary issue that ties all the discourse together has less to do with the methods by which games are created, and more to do with the quality and intent of the games being created. Everyone is clearly passionate about the community that has sprung up over the course of the last few years, since previously it was a very fractured and disparate collection of people all working on projects that could spread only by word of mouth or through their own pockets of community. Passion like that comes with a pride in the work they produce and consume, and seeing people use their passion as a means for exploitation will of course create strong emotions.
With that in mind however, I do believe that the issue is more multi-faceted than it is one focused attack being made on the site.
For starters, I believe that the majority (Not all, which I’ll address shortly) of projects using AI are simply people who lack the resources or ability to create pieces of content that they believe would be integral towards creating their vision for a finished product. As anyone who has ever tried knows, even the simplest of tools for game development take an exceptional amount of time and effort to utilize. If people decide that using certain resources would allow them to complete their project more efficiently, I see no issue with it being used in appropriate contexts.
This does not extend to a project with the intent of making a profit, however. A hobby that gains no income from the effort being expended by the person investing their time is not subject to the same standards of professionalism I would expect from a paid project. If a project is being sold and not freely distributed, then there is no excuse for a person to not invest that money into paying an artist or developer to create the resources necessary to avoid the use of generative tools. Whether or not you argue that without those resources it would not be viable for sale is a factor you should consider when making that initial investment of time.
As to whether or not AI should be included at all, I would personally follow in the recommendations of others and make a more stringent policy towards separating AI content from non-AI content within its own category. While the moderation team may only be so many people, it’s been proven that people are more than willing to assist and report these projects so that they can be handled when time is available to the moderation team. As I mentioned earlier however, this does not extend to paid projects, which I believe should be barred from the use of AI whenever possible, to disincentivize the proliferation of scam projects.