New "vibe coded" AI translation tool splits the video game preservation community
Since Andrej Karpathy coined the term "vibe coding" just over a year ago, we've seen a rapid increase in both the capabilities and popularity of using AI models to throw together quick programming projects with less human time and effort than ever before. One such vibe-coded project, Gaming Alexandria Researcher, launched over the weekend as what coder Dustin Hubbard called an effort to help organize the hundreds of scanned Japanese gaming magazines he's helped maintain at clearinghouse Gaming Alexandria over the years, alongside machine translations of their OCR text.
A day after that project went public, though, Hubbard was issuing an apology to many members of the Gaming Alexandria community who loudly objected to the use of Patreon funds for an error-prone AI-powered translation effort. The hubbub highlights just how controversial AI tools remain for many online communities, even as many see them as ways to maximize limited funds and man-hours.
"I sincerely apologize," Hubbard wrote in his apology post. "My entire preservation philosophy has been to get people access to things we've never had access to before. I felt this project was a good step towards that, but I should have taken more into consideration the issues with AI."