"Who Owns ROM Hacking?" And Other Questions AI Poisons Us With
Recently, I've been hearing about people wanting to make an SMW Central alternative. As far as I can tell, the individuals who desire this the most are also the individuals most open to using GenAi. If you read my last essay about Mixtape, this shouldn't come as a surprise. Mixtape's poor reception combined with an uptick of SMW Central rejections due to GenAi usage has led to a lot of GenAi supporters feeling alienated from the community. I do not have sympathy for these people. I do, however, want to take some time to deconstruct some of the specific things I've been hearing.
As a disclosure, I am the hack section lead for SMW Central. I will be talking a lot about SMW Central, but the opinions expressed are entirely my own and I do not speak for SMW Central as a whole.
"Nobody Owns ROM Hacking."
This statement is objectively true. Taking a ROM and modifying it to make something new is not a concept that has ownership. The concept of remixing music doesn't have ownership, nor does the concept of making a collage out of existing work. For anyone artistically inclined, this seems like a fairly obvious concept. But this isn't what the statement was about.
The pro-GenAi group seems to have the idea that, because SMW Central is the primary SMW hacking resource, it is the "be-all and end-all." Anyone who makes SMW hacks must follow the rules of SMW Central or risk intense criticism by those on the site. This is, of course, not how it works. There is nothing preventing you from making ROM hacks however you'd like, including using GenAi to create custom code or images. Believe it or not, SMW Central doesn't have the power to physically prevent you from doing something. What it does have the power to do, however, is prevent that work from being uploaded to the site.
SMW Central has a strong "no GenAi" policy, so work that includes GenAi content is rejected from the site. That's it. Functionally, this means that GenAi users cannot submit work to the site unless they follow the rules and don't use GenAi for their project. I want to point out that SMW Central doesn't ban people for being pro-GenAi, nor are they barred from anything just for being pro-GenAi. They simply can't upload content to the site that was created with GenAi. Despite this, GenAi users believe that, because SMW Central has rules against GenAi content, SMW Central must feel the need to "control or dictate" what they do.
This context transforms the statement substantially. When this group of individuals says "nobody owns ROM hacking," what they mean is that they should be allowed to publish their work wherever they want without consequence. Notably, these statements are nowhere near equivalent. One describes the way that nobody has ownership over an artistic concept, the other describes the desire for ownership of a specific institution. You don't need SMW Central to publish a ROM hack. You can make your own website and host it there, or you can find a file host and pass the link around, or you can mail out flash drives with the hack on it. Nothing is preventing any of these people from publishing their work. Despite that, these individuals want to be seen as victims, so they push this narrative.
This group of people also believe that other hackers hold a sense of ownership over an IP (Super Mario) that they don't own. This isn't the case. People who hack SMW do not feel like they own the rights to Super Mario, they feel like they own their creation. And, like any remixed work, they do. The framing of this argument feels intentionally malicious because it removes the work of the individual from the argument entirely. I believe this further demonstrates the entitlement over other people's work that GenAi supporters feel they have. This is the heart of my previous essay about Mixtape, so you should read that if you're interested in hearing more.
"People Shouldn't Be Crucified for Using GenAi."
This statement depends on the definition of "being crucified." When this group says it, they mean that they are being treated cruelly for using GenAi. From an SMW Central perspective, while I can't speak to how the forum rules are enforced, I can say that cruel treatment of others is explicitly against the rules without exception. Personal attacks on GenAi supporters would not be tolerated.
What SMW Central does have is a large community. And, like all communities, the individuals within hold opinions. It just so happens that, throughout the lifespan of SMW Central, it has cultivated a community that tends to reject GenAi in favor of the celebration of human-made work. In this regard, what pro-GenAi individuals see as "crucifixion" are instead strong anti-GenAi opinions from many people on the site.
Making a new site won't solve this problem. GenAi supporters and users will still be heavily criticized outside of their bubble. While you can block people from expressing their opinions on a platform you control, you cannot prevent people from holding those opinions and expressing them elsewhere. To be blunt, I would be thrilled if the pro-GenAi group made their own site because I would love to never hear about them again. I would love to worry less about GenAi work sneaking on to SMW Central. Unfortunately, this isn't the current reality.
Someone in this pro-GenAi group said that they "know that a number of people who released hacks within the last couple years did use some semblance of AI help, but obviously couldn't disclose it due to being crucified." On the SMW Central side, the response to this wouldn't be crucifixion, it would be the removal of those hacks. It's also important to know that SMW Central doesn't retroactively apply rules, so any hack that was uploaded before the rule was put into effect would stick around.
In the case of the hacks that would be removed, we call this "the consequences of our actions." When we break rules, there are consequences. Those individuals broke the no GenAi rule, and the consequence would be the removal of their hack(s). This reveals a sinister sentiment held by this pro-GenAi group: they believe that they are above the rules. They believe that they should be able to submit hacks wherever they want because they believe they aren't doing anything objectionable.
In a public Twitch chat, an SMW Central user named Insanit revealed that he still uses GenAi for things where nobody would be able to tell he used it. This demonstrates the entitlement in the simplest sense: they think they can get away with it, so they do it. Much like with the Mixtape situation, the pro-GenAi group feels a sense of entitlement so extreme that they are willing to openly discuss violating site rules. Even still, this isn't crucifixion: this is criticism and consequences.
"I'm Not Going to Keep Fighting Things Out of My Control."
This is the biggest and most general statement on the list. Things like this are often said by GenAi supporters to justify their GenAi use. Other examples include "owning a phone is using GenAi" and "using Google is GenAi," and because everybody does these things, it's okay to embrace GenAi and use it for anything. This is not so.
People often say that "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism." This statement has been appropriated and twisted around to justify the unethical actions of people living under capitalism. "Because there is no ethical consumption," they say, "it is okay for me to buy Nestlé products. It is out of my control." Obviously, though, this isn't what the statement means. It doesn't mean that you, individually, are responsible for changing capitalism, nor does it mean that everything is permissible under capitalism. It instead asks you to critically evaluate capitalism and, if you are able to, make an effort to make more ethical choices. We must recognize that making ethical choices is impossible in many situations, but we must also recognize that some choices are more unethical than others.
This concept applies to GenAi as well. It's true that GenAi has been adopted by many large companies, and it's true that many are forced to use GenAi when they go about their daily lives. Many jobs in tech now mandate that employees use GenAi. But there are important nuances to the situation that change things. For one, most smartphones with GenAi features allow you to disable them or simply not use them. You can turn off Siri entirely in iOS 27, for example. Google demonstrates something else. Google Search has dominated search engines for so long that, when it makes changes, the entire internet adjusts. In that sense, you can't really get away from GenAi when you're searching for something. The difference, then, lies in what you're choosing to do. Google's choice to shove GenAi into Google Search does not justify your personal decision to use GenAi. Using a search engine is an inevitability of the internet. Personally choosing to open Grok and generate an image, however, is not. You have full control of that choice, which means you have to entirely own that decision. And that's the core of the issue.
I saw one of these people say that "anyone who's freaking out about someone using AI to help them code ASM doesn't understand modern coding workflows at all." This blanket statement is inaccurate, and modern programming workflows vary heavily. For example, I work as a programmer and artist at a game development studio, and no part of my workflow involves GenAi. I've also disabled all language model support in my IDE, and I simply do not open the website for ChatGPT or opt to download and use Claude. You can do it too. I'd argue it's easier not to use GenAi, in fact.
Final Remarks
It angers me to see people use GenAi in communities focused on human creativity. It angers me to see such poor justifications for GenAi use. It angers me to see the entitlement that GenAi users feel when it comes to the art of other people. It angers me to see the victim mentality that GenAi supporters have adopted. It is difficult for me to comprehend why people would still choose to engage with GenAi despite the environmental impacts, the destruction of culture and communities, the harm it causes to those living around data centers, and the massive amount of plagiarism required for its function.
Someone told me that "ideologically rejecting every aspect [of GenAi] will hurt devs in the long run." I don't agree with this. First of all, the implication that developers need GenAi to create anything is much more harmful than rejecting GenAi. Second of all, there is no world where I will actively engage with GenAi given the ethical issues. Believe it or not, you can still create things without GenAi. You can, in fact, just pick up a pencil and start drawing. I'm learning how to draw right now because I want to expand my creative outlets. Soon, I want to learn how to make music. It brings me immense joy to be creative, to do things myself, to go from idea to artwork. I don't understand how there are people that not only don't care about that, but would actively invade a community of people who do.
To everyone who is as against GenAi as I am: we will prevail. Please keep celebrating human-made art. And if you're considering making something, know that anything you create will be more valuable than anything GenAi has ever produced. I know things are difficult, but I promise that we'll make it through this together. Never stop creating.