Generative AI is impossible!

Everyone is talking about "generative" AI, but is it even possible? If AI is "generative" why is the issue of copyright infringement coming up? Why can't it write articles and generate images and videos without obvious tells. I've specifically tried to determine of it can write code.

Merriam Webster Definitions:

Let's start by looking at definitions. First "generative AI" has been used for a while so the definitions are already spoiled by it's existence and general use. It's being used to define itself. If this isn't interesting to you, skip down to the next subheading and we'll look at computer limitations with generation.

Generative: let's ignore b as it's self declaring. We have generative as "reproducing" and c in "reproduce is "to imitate closely" and d is "to present again" so okay I'll give AI this, it can copy entirely or closely what it is given source, this however isn't how it's being advertised either to consumers or investors.

So let's look at the word create. "to bring into existence" computers can create new files, this is a low bar though. "to invest with a new form, office, or rank" not really, "to produce or bring about by a course of action or behavior", well AI makes a lot of people angry and that is an emotion it creates in people, again not what we're looking for. ": cause, occasion Famine creates high food prices." oh there we go AI raises our energy bills, bingo we got one! ;) 4, is what's we're being sold "to produce through imaginative skill" sorry computers are incapable of "imaginative" or "skills", so no a computer can't create anything by definition. Anyone with common sense or a computer science background already knows this.

One last word: "new" because this is the source of the copyright infringement and really how AI is suppose to save us... can it make anything new? Well AI is new, but people have created AI, it hasn't created itself, and looking at the definition of "create" above it can not. 

AI must be fed in some way to do ANYTHING, this feeding is of creative things someone else already has a copyright on, and this is called making "derivative works" and that is copyrighted. If a human does this they are guilty of copyright infringement. Look at that AI even "understands" this, but does it anyway. ;) The point being a computer given no commands does nothing. Computers can not come up with anything on their own.

What computers can't do

Divide by zero! Correct, but not what we're looking at.

Answer: Generate random numbers.

Computers are fast at math and problem solving they've been programmed to handle, but can not generate something as simple as a random number from 1-6 for a dice roll, or even 0-1 for a coin flip. This is literally impossible. How is it done then? Random number generators are "seeded" with a value. usually time in it's smallest measurement in a tiny factions of a second so even if you run the software multiple times in a second it will give you different outcomes to these supposed random numbers. However if you seed the same random number generator with the same seed it will ALWAYS generate the same numbers in the same order EVERY time. This is also why these "random" numbers never feel truly random even before programs manipulate them for better odds for or against the player. In real life true random will give you combinations you seldom see in computer's random numbers. Never bet on anything with a circuit board in it!

Gaming Tip: This is how "save scumming" is prevented in games. No matter how many times you re-load your save that "random number" will always be rolled the same. This is because the "seed number" is also saved so the random numbers ALWAYS roll the same.

AI Created Content:

Now that we know everything in computers needs to be "seeded," what does AI do? It's seeded or trained on data models. So the Call of Duty AI that "generated" the 6-fingered zombie obviously had pictures of zombies, Santa, snow, blood splatters, etc. However no one told it what fingers are, how many humans have and how to make sure the image it mashed together (from that seeded data) only has 5 fingers.

The same way computers are unable to generate random number, they are far more unable to generate unique images, video, sentences, or anything else. The 6 fingered zombie took images it had been trained on and basically Photoshopped a bunch of them together to create that image. Don't get me wrong the programs to do this are impressive, but it did not create anything. This is like hiring an outsource artist you don't know to create an image for you and find out it's a computation of stolen images off the internet, except you know this is what you're getting before ever searching. 

If you ask AI to generate an image of something it hasn't been trained on, and it doesn't have an internet connection to search for content, or the AI can't define the words you use to prompt the results will be nothing, or some default values you aren't looking for based on the programming. These images are like random numbers added/multiplies and put through processes so that the output isn't exactly the input, but also isn't new, it highly complex math being done on the seeded images to hide the copyright infringement to try and avoid a lawsuite.

So then how does AI do "unintended" or "untrained" things like Darth Vader dropping F bombs to 8 year olds playing Fortnite on their mom's cell phone? Easy it was allowed to train itself. Most likely by recording open voice chat, converting that voice chat to text, was repeated enough by the community to become important, calculations were done in the code that was determined to be a "greeting" or something else that the AI should start learning to appear to be part of the Fortnite community and Darth Vader talks like your average Fortnite tween.

This is where the real danger of AI starts to become a reality. "Safe" AI has told people to end their lives, that the planet would be better without humans or specific groups of humans. There are two problems with this 1) It is true for a lot of complex answers AI is trying to solve. 2) There are people saying things in ignorance, sarcastically, or joking on the internet that the AI will come across and not be able to make these distinctions about what is a true statement.

The number of systems controlled entirely by a computer are growing every day. While this can be useful, the answers about what to do in specific situations still must be run though intelligent people or there could easily be an AI that looks at a damn opened to prevent flooding as reducing the energy generated and closes it to increase energy generation either without knowing it will fill to capacity and break in the next 48 hours flooding the valley below and killing an unknown number of people, or knowing this, but thinking it's an "acceptable" trade off to maintain energy goals.

This is a minor localized example that could scale up to a national or world-wide scenario, and it's already happening on an individual scale where autonomous cars have bugs that kill people. This can not be prevented with "good planning" and (foreshadowing) computers written by AI have a much higher bug rate then skilled human programmers generate.

AI Playing Games:

So one of AI's biggest accomplishment is beating humans in games. The 1997 Garry Kasparov vs. Deep Blue. How did this play out? There was nothing generative, all of the possible moves were available to the computer, it played using chess champions moves, it calculated all the possible moves multiple-moves into the future and simply came up with the best possible moves based on the current situation and being able to weigh more possible moves then a human player is able to without emotion. The win was in faster move processing than a human brain to make better choices, not in generating new moves or strategies.

Taking this to the next level of AI neural networks playing more complex games like StarCraft. The AI is again "trained" or "seeded" on the entire competitive library of StarCraft games, given smaller sets of goals to work it's wait towards the goal of winning and through trial and error comes up with the best possible moves (again limited by the game rules) based on the current situation to win. 

AI Writing Code:

The last subject I want to talk about is "generative" AI code. I really thought computers would be able to write their own code better. Writing code isn't "easy" it requires understanding how to ask computers to do things in the precise ways and orders they need to be asked. However compilers already take "human readable" code and turn it into machine languages and have all the rules to do that. I really thought the fact that there is nothing "generative" about coding (all of the syntax is set and has defined rules) would allow AI to handle this task. However this limitation seems to be the same one that doesn't allow it to write articles, books very well. There is a lot of problem solving and information that has to be used across the entire scope of a program that is similar to say writing a novel. Coding could be seen as an exponentially larger game problem, the difference I think is there is no one right answer or clear "winning" goal. If you could explain the input and output of your problem to a computer I would expect it to be able to find a solution eventually after brute force trail and error similarly to chess, but this has proven to not even be close so far.

Satya Nadella (Microsoft's CEO) has publicly stated 20-30% of Windows 11 code is written by AI and it's been over a year of buggy mess patches that at times have prevented the OS from even booting.

In my personal experience I've asked AI how to do something in Unreal Engine 5's C++ and asked GitHub Copilot to either fix, or fill in code between lines of working code to do something. Even very simple tasks turn into dozens of prompts trying to get it to do simple tasks. More then once it takes perfectly working code and makes multiple edits trying to change the wrong parts until the code no longer compiles and it can't even back out it's changes to return to a working state again. Don't get me wrong I like Copilot, but it's basically a Google search inside Visual Studio, or it can save you time drilling through references to find what you're looking for faster, help you find compile errors, etc. It can not reliably write code, when it does, it requires immediate refactoring to fix bugs and logic errors. I've also used AI professionally, I'll refrain from specific examples, but the the results were similar and worse.

Summery:

Part of me hopes this post ages poorly, but most of me is glad it will not. Computers are a great tool, but you can't let them "think" for you, they can't generate a random number much less a thought. Instead corporations control what the AI generates by way of it's "seeds" and code. I think the tools computers provide for us will continue to improve over time, but they can not "generate" anything they will only sort data quickly and treat that data however they've been told to treat it.

We're being sold a fantasy of "generative AI" no one can deliver, corporations and individual users need to stop sacrificing people that can solve our problems for computers that can not, and don't overestimate the data provided by "AI" it's only as good or bad as it's been told to be either intentionally or through it's own bugs and limitations.

Rising Video Game Prices?

This is hopefully a first post in a mini-series about the current state of game development in 2026. This is not defending the rising cost of video games, just some history I find it surprisingly unknown when conversations come up to help educate on this conversation.

My first experience with Video Games was at my grandparent's house. Back in the early-mid 80's the systems were so expensive I didn't know anyone that owned one in my circle of friends. It was a luxury item sold to those with money. It wasn't until LATE in the Atari 2600's life span that the same grandparents bought us one for Christmas after playing it at their house for years. I didn't know anyone else with one, but it was a hit to play with friends well past it's relevance in the industry.

1983 Games Cost ~ $98

This add is from circa 1983, well after the Atari 2600/VCS launch (1977 at: ~$200), and the 5200 was already out. I used this image because there are multiple systems and game prices. The $29.99 games adjusted for inflation in 2026 would be around $98 today and they peak at $37.

1996 Games Cost ~$145

My first system was the original Game Boy and I saved up and bought a SNES on a Black Friday door buster sale years into it's life cycle. I had a friend with an NES, another with a Genesis, but most still didn't own a system. It was a big deal when one of my friends has a sleepover weekends where they rented a SNES and Street Fighter II and we played it most of the 3 day weekend. It was still expensive enough families chose one system and you'd pull all your birthday/Christmas money to buy one game and sometimes be able to scrape up enough to pull something out of a bargain been a couple other times a year at best. I'd get 3-4 games a year, play the ()*$# out of them, and towards the end when they were more common swap games with friends for variety. Part of the choice of game purchase was something you couldn't swap with someone in your circle of friends. Blockbuster was a popular choice to rent a game over the weekend if I had $5 saved up.

Gaming became very popular again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES, released in 1985 priced ~$200) and continued growing up through today. This add from circa 1996 and shows multiple games at $69.99 adjusted for inflation (2.45%) in 2026 that's about $145 per game.

2006 Game Cost ~ $96

I've own every PlayStation and this is when games started being affordable to the general public in my opinion. I was still selective with my game choices and rented many games. I worked at Blockbuster Video when the PlayStation 2 came out and would stay well after out midnight closing to play the rental system until 2-3am trying out new titles before I could afford the PlayStation 2. 

This add is from 2006 where games still sold for $59.99 adjusted for inflation that's $95-97 in 2026. I'm going to stop here as I feel like 2006 to now is better understood and documented.

Summery:

In summery games never really adjusted for inflation. Their prices have always been around the $60 mark for new releases. If the games did adjust for inflation like groceries or almost anything else in the world we would easily be paying $150 for just a game. You can see this with console prices that started around $200, but the PlayStation 5 is selling now for $549 (released 2020 at $400).

So should games cost $150 now, and why don't they?

The teams that create these games have also grown from a dozen people total to thousands. Salaries are higher now, but not adjusted for inflation. Developers don't make the money anymore. I've worked with people that have been in the industry since the 90's or earlier who have a Ferrari parked at their parent's house they don't use, another who worked nearly every waking hour because he got paid for overtime and built his wealth by working hard while companies still shared the profits with the people creating the games, another owns one of the world's biggest Yachts and retired traveling the world. These are only examples I personally worked with, bigger stories are out there and easy to find. Developers used to be paid well for their successful work, don't get me wrong they're still paid well, but the majority of the money doesn't trickle down like it used to.

So how does the industry beat inflation? The short answer is they make enough sales to cover it. Let's look at the top 5 Atari 2600 game sales:

• 8 million - Pac-Man
• 6 million - Space Invaders
• 4 million - Donkey Kong
• 4 million - Pitfall
• 3.8 million - Asteroids

Let's compare that to the top 5 selling current games (mostly cross-platform, but Nintendo?!?):

• 350 million - Minecraft
• 220 million - Grand Theft Auto V
• 82.9 million - Wii Sports
• 79 million - Red Dead Redemption 2
• 78 million - Mario Kart 8 / Deluxe

So the highest selling "modern" game has 4,275% more sales than on the Atari 2600. (Minecraft, released, 2011, $29.99, adjusted for inflation $44 in 2026).

I do think the main thing game pricing got right even into the early 2000s is that everything wasn't at the max price point, games had a better understanding of where they fit in the pricing system than they do now, indie are the only place that still applies today.

Speaking of indies are you interested in why indie games feel more like these classic games a lot of us still love in 2026 watch for another post soon trying to tackle that idea.