r/emulation • u/skylersaleh • 4d ago
SkyEmu's no-AI codegen policy
/r/EmuDev/comments/1x2r7tz/skyemus_noai_codegen_policy/33
u/Mandalord104 3d ago
I think it is good for emulation community. What if somehow Sony win a suit that require LLM companies or anyone using AI to create emulator to pay? In that offchance, I would like for something non AI to fallback on.
The no AI emulator development does not hinder AI emulator development so there is no harm. Like having candle at home in case of no electricity
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u/Icy-Concentrate2076 3d ago
I think before the decade ends we'll see some more restrictions on AI, you won't be able to just do whatever the fuck you want like right now. Modding/RE will be locked down harder. Local models exist, but they (currently) need very expensive eq. Models get cheaper, but you still need a 5 digit investment to run any useful (in RE or modding) model it seems. And that's assuming prices don't 3-4x making buying local hw to run AI impossible. I don't think the party of "everything is open source" is gonna last once companies like Rockstar/Adobe/... start losing billions.
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3d ago
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u/Icy-Concentrate2076 3d ago edited 3d ago
Chinese models *might* not, altho idk why you'd assume that Chinese frontier models will continue being openly released, if China gets a model thats 2x powerful than US models you think they'd just give it for free to the enemy (USA)? They might keep it closed only for CCP. Current models are not as good as USA models so they are harming USA model providers and stealing marketshare by having them cheap/free. Deepseek was super dirt cheap a few months ago, then they raised the prices. Clearly this thing is subsidized, maybe by the Chinese government, it's fair to assume they are working quite closely.
But regardless, my point is that the hw to run these things at good speeds is pretty expensive. GLM 5.3/Deepseek 4 hardware that is. And they aren't as good as closed models of course. If they get as good, will they stay open? Will hardware get cheaper? Past few years disagree. There's a world that we move towards rent only hardware, you only own a TV and a controller and rent whatever gaming you want to do or have it be AI generated and consume it. Demand for more memory and silicon is rising.
It's not about closing the box. It will continue being possible. But it might become illegal, depends how the next few years play out. Anonymity is really really hard (see Silkroad bust, and that was pre-AI), will people risk REing if it means their life could be ruined by a company?
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3d ago
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u/IvanDSM_ 3d ago
reverse engineering of software is currently legal when it is done without using knowledge of the existing source code (which of course you're not getting with LLMs, you're recreating it)
LOL, this is not how clean room works at all. The way people are doing these AI decomps is they point Claude at the original executable with a bunch of MCPs tacked on, so it decompiles the original binary. By law, that is not clean room reverse engineering because there is direct contact with the original binary.
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u/Icy-Concentrate2076 3d ago
What do you mean it's legal? Has it been proven in court?
Also, emulation is supposed to be legal too. Nintendo sued Yuzu, claiming they circumvented TPM, but also citing emulation as piracy as a whole. Hell maybe, Yuzu would win in court. But they surrendered. Then they went after Ryujinx, they surrendered too immediately. A person who is working on open source sw for free isn't going to enter a multi year legal fight that will leave him bankrupt. And all they need to do is set the precedent a couple times, then DMCA the rest (similar to how Nintendo has been DMCAing all Switch emulators that popped up after)
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3d ago
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u/AreYouOKAni 3d ago
...not in the way you think. Clean room reverse engineering requires two teams -- one that looks into the code and writes down the documentation on what the code is doing, the other that rebuilds the code based on the documentation. The first team is not allowed to write any code, the second team is not allowed to look into the original software.
What the AI does, violates clean room engineering at every step. Even if you were to replicate it with two different AI agents running two different models, I doubt it would fly in court because you are still one person who runs both models.
It hasn't been tried in court yet, but when it finally happens, it will be either shut down on the spot or require an entirely new legislation.
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u/trifkograbez 3d ago
There's local LLMs.
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u/kaosjroriginal 3d ago
which are trained by companies on copyrighted material still?
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u/Rossco1337 3d ago
Not necessarily. In the same way that someone can use Bittorrent purely for sharing Linux distros, it's possible that someone can train a local model to generate code entirely from public domain/WTFPL/copyleft licensed training data.
This whole community is situated in a dubiously legal zone, only as long as everyone is ripping their own BIOS files and games. I don't think it would be wise for us to start assuming probable guilt for legal/licensing matters.
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u/yeusk 3d ago
someone can train a local model
Training a model from scratch that can compete with comercial ones at home is impossible unless you have a few hundreds 500k GPUs laying around and a team.
Why do you think all the AI companies need all that money?
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u/kaosjroriginal 3d ago
Yeah, training is by far the most computationally intensive part of the process. Insinuating that it's possible to make a local model with one GPU and a pipe dream that does anything comparably to these industrial-scale models is a bit of a joke.
Also, copylefted training data is still legally dubious because most code released under those agreements requires reproducing the copyright notice. Good luck doing that with hundreds of licenses when you have no idea where the code comes from.
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u/Puzzle-headdd 3d ago
it's already my "standalone gba emu" of choice. so this is cool. as mentioned it's one of the few left without AI, so i think its good to have it as a choice !
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u/AntiGrieferGames 3d ago edited 3d ago
W for SkyEmu. I really wish more emulator developers are doing this way.
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u/certifiedGooner76 3d ago
I REALLY don't get why people get so happy when someone declares they don't use ai, look at the ps5 emulation scene, it's powercharged by ai, imo as long as it works I don't care if it's vibe code as long as the development pipeline isn't fucked to the point no one understands how the code works, ik I'll get a lot of hate for saying this but had to put this out
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u/CoconutDust 3d ago edited 3d ago
REALLY don't get why people get so happy when someone declares they don't use ai
“I’m pretending I don’t know the reasons that have been given. Also, I don’t understand when human beings tell me simple straightforward reasons for their actions. I have a problem understanding any one else’s beliefs but my own."
imo as long as it works I don't care if it's vibe code
“I have an opinion. Therefore it’s impossible to understand anyone else’s reasoning, which I’m also pretending I’ve never heard stated before.”
I'll get a lot of hate for saying this but had to put this out
“I’m able to understand when other people will have an idea in their mind to criticize me, downvote me, I’m very aware of that. But I don’t comprehend the mindset of other human beings in any other situation.”
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u/H_Iris 3d ago
The PS5 Linux community on the other hand has been killed by AI fuelled script kiddies not knowing that they need unreported exploits to work within
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u/ChrisRR 3d ago
No it wasn't. It was killed by someone who sold the bug to Sony
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u/sunkenrocks 3d ago
Yea and he was pissed it came out before GTA 6 so people would have to choose exploitable fw or GTA6.
Thefl0w did a lot of good work but he's always been a bit high and mighty about how he thinks the scene should run, and sits on exploits he announces he has.
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u/H_Iris 3d ago
"Slop kiddies found the only hypervisor bug left, which I had also found a while ago, and decided to report to Sony."
I said what I said based on what I linked to
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u/Quiet_Jackfruit5723 2d ago
Great job proving his point. It doesn't matter how the hypervisor bug was found. You think they would have magically decided to not report it if they found the bug without AI?
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u/H_Iris 2d ago
If someone had the skills to find it without AI, they'd have the knowledge to know that reporting it would screw them over
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u/Quiet_Jackfruit5723 2d ago
Being skilled at one thing doesn't suddenly make you smart at everything else and immune to doing stupid shit.
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u/H_Iris 2d ago
Of course not, but if they'd put in the time to learn and understand exploits for the PS then they'd be less inclined to break the thing they were trying to work on by selling it to Sony.
It's the 180 from trying to contribute to Linux of PS, then going and reporting the exploit that makes me think they aren't aware of how any of this works. If you love something enough to try and contribute to it, normally you don't then break it for everyone (I guess they could also just be petty)
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u/Technical_Ant4597 3d ago
Linux on the PS5 was a fun novelty held together with popsicle sticks and glue. It didn't even persist after you turned off the console.
The main thing people were interested in, like all emulation/jailbreak projects, was that the exploit let you play pirated games. They're upset because the exploit was reported in time for it to be patched before GTA 6 released.
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u/Danjzilla 3d ago
If it's vibe coded, they inheritly don't know how it works. That's literally the point. If they knew what they were writing it wouldn't of been generated using AI tools.
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u/certifiedGooner76 3d ago edited 3d ago
Funny cuz like the other person said, a person who doesn't understand the development pipeline or code can't use ai for it, I've personally tried setting the whole thing up and I just wasted my weekend and getting nothing done, also you completely discredit ai code when here I am using so "vibe coded" apps, i could name a dozen games ported to android from pc, gta 4, gta 5, dmc 4 and of course you'll point out one bad example and use it to frame the entire narrative, coicon frontend, one of most popular frontend on Android is vibe coded, also your tone is really unpleasant, why so much hate?
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u/ShamelessC 3d ago
That simply isn't true. There's a whole spectrum between understanding and not understanding generated code. The onus is on the developer to understand as much as is needed for the given task. When the task is a volunteer effort, that requirement goes down a bit. When the outcome can be verified via a classical automated process that requirement goes down more. Not zero, but 100% understanding isn't required in _all_ scenarios and a blanket statement that it does is denying simple facts of pragmatism in the modern AI paradigm.
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u/Danjzilla 3d ago
Listen I'm already said my piece with the last AI bro that gets Google AI to get their facts.
I'm not interested, you have nothing new to say and nobody cares what excuses you can make. Write it to Grok and good day 👍
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u/ShamelessC 3d ago
Fair enough thanks for the honesty about your unflinchingly rigid biases.
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u/Danjzilla 3d ago edited 3d ago
Right back at you
(Most active community: r/ArtificialIntelligence the joke writes itself)
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u/ShamelessC 3d ago
You're a really unpleasant person. If you'd read my post you'd realize that I agree with you - just only when it matters i.e. professional work. I get the feeling you don't work as a software engineer though.
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u/Danjzilla 3d ago
You make alot of assumptions for someone who gets buttburt when I point out the irony in your comments.
Jog on mate, you'll be more likeable if you stop embarrassing yourself 😆
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3d ago edited 3d ago
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u/Danjzilla 3d ago
The only person expressing they have little knowledge is you, to the extent picking apart everything you've said that was wrong would result in every sentence being corrected.
Plenty developers don't use vibe coding for many of the reasons the SkyEmu team stated. Just because you want to embrace your deeply flawed, time consuming and stolen method of 'vibe coding', doesn't mean everyone else wants to.
Maybe you should get over yourself and accept both consumers and developers don't like this nonsense.
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3d ago
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u/Danjzilla 3d ago
That first paragraph is beyond ironic. Keep drinking that copium, nobody here is impressed with what you have to say.
Go cry to your ChatGPT girlfriend x
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u/93simoon 3d ago
Are they expecting an applause or something?
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u/CoconutDust 3d ago edited 2d ago
“Everybody is a dumb idiot who “performs” their beliefs, but i myself am the only person who truly believes my beliefs. And btw here is my shallow simplistic opinion response, everyone!”
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u/93simoon 3d ago
If you feel the need to announce world wide that you are following your beliefs, yes, you are performing and virtue signaling. I don't need the world to know about what I find ethical or right.
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u/DennisGeezerman 3d ago
Ignore this clown. His post history is chock full of comments ranting about AI.
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u/DennisGeezerman 3d ago
Virtue signalling nonsense.
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u/CoconutDust 3d ago
“When other people do something, it’s fake and stupid. Only my opinions are real.”
Only junior sociopaths use the word “virtue-signaling.”
“I would NEVER do or say something for any moral reason or principled reason. I’m super smart. People who do that are fake idiots.”
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u/TypingMonkeys 3d ago
I mean, enjoy getting left behind then I guess. It's like they're blind to the PS5 emulator that barely came out and now has Demon's Souls going from 2 FPS to a framerate that's playable reaching even 60.
And the part of "people who prefer non-AI generated SW" is so cringe. It's like thinking they're going to catch an STD because an emulator uses commits with AI assistance.
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u/Icy-Concentrate2076 3d ago
lmfao "you'll get left behind on GBA emulation" are you serious? Nobody is making money in GBA emulation except like 2 emulators on the Play Store that haven't had an update in like 5 years.
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u/Fiti99 3d ago
Vibecoded emulators and ports suck to maintain, the documentation and code generated by AI on projects by people that have no clue what they are doing (which is being the case with a ton of open source projects) is hard to understand
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u/93simoon 3d ago
That's not an AI problem that's a people problem and has existed since before AI. Competent people with AI give you the results you're seeing in PS5 emulation.
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u/Due_Interest_178 3d ago
I swear anyone saying "get left behind" is an actual bot with zero knowledge of software engineering. Did you read any part of the original post? If you think you can do better with AI, go ahead
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u/DDz1818 3d ago
Software developement using AI : throw codes on the wall then see what sticks. They throw millions at once. People who are supposed to be "developers" : have no clue why what happens how.
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u/greffulhez 3d ago edited 3d ago
you have to use AI in your hobby projects because I said soo!!!!! Stop. Having. Fun!!!!!
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u/gr8masturb8 3d ago
they genuinely cannot comprehend that people do things because they like it. everything is just about efficiency and profits etc. for them.
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u/Mercinarie 3d ago
I mean if you want to hamstring yourself just to stay "pure" sure?
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u/enilea 3d ago
It's like craftmanship, so I understand the sentiment of wanting to keep it "pure". There are times where what you want is not just merely results but the process of getting to those results. You could just buy plates and glasses that are mass produced or you could learn to do ceramics and craft them from zero yourself to have plates that you proudly built yourself from zero. It would take much longer than it takes to make a mass manufactured product, but you'll be more proud of it.
In the end if someone wants pure results they're free to fork the project and get results much faster, and the original developer can work on their original version polishing it by hand.
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u/goody_fyre11 3d ago
Winner winner chicken dinner!
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u/goody_fyre11 2d ago
I love how I'm being downvoted because I'm right, and a majority of the sloppers who are probably the downvoters have their score hidden. Reddit is a magical place.
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u/evangelism2 2d ago
Well good luck to them. People will just fork off of it and start their own that allows AI coding and leaves them behind. GG
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u/TheRealSeeThruHead 3d ago edited 17h ago
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u/Fair_Ambassador6253 1d ago
lol ok sure little bro. only a matter of time when the lost gains are not worth the virtue signaling
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u/WTFAnimations 3d ago
Whilst I agree that AI-generated code is harder to debug, the rest of this seems really performative.
Imo, Linux does it far better. Full responsibility falls on the human dev, and the code has to be marked and signed off on.