Check out our 2024 Student Films Showcase! Let me know if you have a film that should be included there, I’ll be promoting that post in the big box later this month.

Our Drawing Tablet Giveaway is also in progress, if you’re an artist in the US who is in need of a tablet.

@Flamadour announced the Battle of the Bands winner. Congrats, @UwUwizard!

Audio Portal Updates

Last week the Takeover Tuesday audio entries got updated to work with our in-page player. Clicking the audio thumbnail will play it in-page, allowing you to listen to the whole list like a playlist.

This week, fixes were made so that audio more consistently picks up where you left off. If a song is next in line to auto-play, however, it will now always start from the beginning. This means that every next song in a playlist will start from the beginning, whereas in the past, sometimes a song would start midway through if you had listened to some of it previously.

Starting today, audio pages will now also load more songs if the in-page player reaches the bottom of the list. In the past, you would need to scroll down to load more songs before resuming. Now it’s automatic, for uninterrupted listening.

Let us know if you run into any bugs with any of that!

Speaking of bugs, there was an accidental merge yesterday morning and an unfinished / unintended feature went live for a few hours. People who were trying to upload audio were met with a message saying they either needed to be scouted, or have at some point been a Supporter in order to upload audio.

This is a feature we started on while being inundated with AI music, which continues to be a problem but for the moment we’re managing it. If we ever resort to something like this, we’d prefer to offer additional paths to get approved, although those might have their own unintended consequences, such as artists being pestered for invites. 

The Audio Portal is difficult to sustain; every month our copyright check stops thousands of songs from being published and many of them file an appeal, despite most of them breaking the rules. Between this and the endless supply of AI music, charging a few bucks feels like the most sane solution. There’d be less artists sharing music but it would put more attention on those who do.

We’ll see how all that goes in 2025. Tomorrow is the Best of November!

first

tom fulp rulez

At 12/13/24 04:19 PM, TomFulp wrote:

: Check out our 2024 Student Films Showcase! Let me know if you have a film that should be included there, I’ll be promoting that post in the big box later this month.

:

: Our Drawing Tablet Giveaway is also in progress, if you’re an artist in the US who is in need of a tablet.

:

: @Flamadour announced the Battle of the Bands winner. Congrats, @UwUwizard!

:

: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1379115

:

: Audio Portal Updates

:

: Last week the Takeover Tuesday audio entries got updated to work with our in-page player. Clicking the audio thumbnail will play it in-page, allowing you to listen to the whole list like a playlist.

:

: This week, fixes were made so that audio more consistently picks up where you left off. If a song is next in line to auto-play, however, it will now always start from the beginning. This means that every next song in a playlist will start from the beginning, whereas in the past, sometimes a song would start midway through if you had listened to some of it previously.

:

: Starting today, audio pages will now also load more songs if the in-page player reaches the bottom of the list. In the past, you would need to scroll down to load more songs before resuming. Now it’s automatic, for uninterrupted listening.

:

: Let us know if you run into any bugs with any of that!

:

: Speaking of bugs, there was an accidental merge yesterday morning and an unfinished / unintended feature went live for a few hours. People who were trying to upload audio were met with a message saying they either needed to be scouted, or have at some point been a Supporter in order to upload audio.

:

: This is a feature we started on while being inundated with AI music, which continues to be a problem but for the moment we’re managing it. If we ever resort to something like this, we’d prefer to offer additional paths to get approved, although those might have their own unintended consequences, such as artists being pestered for invites.

:

: The Audio Portal is difficult to sustain; every month our copyright check stops thousands of songs from being published and many of them file an appeal, despite most of them breaking the rules. Between this and the endless supply of AI music, charging a few bucks feels like the most sane solution. There’d be less artists sharing music but it would put more attention on those who do.

:

: We’ll see how all that goes in 2025. Tomorrow is the Best of November!

I'm glad that the scouted thing with ai was just an error. While I see why you might want to implement it, it definitely would've been weird to do that without at least some heads-up.

What if this surge of AI submissions is a deliberate attempt to poison newgrounds? Just a bit of thought.

I think it’s more likely that people’re just genuinely like “I made this myself, with AI! :)” or treating it like deviantart, like “oh I can upload images/audio here? Let’s put it up here”

Scouting could also be nerfed in such a way that a user would require multiple scouts to be allowed into the portal, or a scout could be a special role given to users by audio moderators to approve new users. I think pay to upload might be a bit too severe of a measure, but I agree that AI audio is making things extremely difficult. I'm always excited at the idea of Newgrounds making more money though.

Speaking of AI, how do incidents of AI audio stack up against AI being used in the other portals in terms of quantity? It's much easier to detect AI generated art vs music which is a good deterrent, but I'm sure people still try, right?

Now, about that writing portal...

There has been more AI audio than art, although some of the AI art is getting increasingly difficult to discern, including with detection tools. I assume AI audio will be getting more difficult, as well. Lots of people will lie and double down when caught. The future is scary.

When people can produce unlimited art and audio (and increasingly movies and games), but also thanks to AI can produce unlimited people, the future of a website where "anyone can sign up and upload things" seems increasingly untenable.

Hell yeah! Using playlists has kinda sucked, having to restart the songs manual and load the page more. Really glad to see this fixed! As for the AI music problem, maybe have their account be X days old before they can post? I've seen the people who upload AI music have their accounts be the day they posted/barely a week old. Might not be the best solution, but I thought I'd say what I was thinking.

I’m honestly hoping that with that, comes some incidents that impact people in power and subsequently, brings more regulation

I believe that just requiring users to fill up some kind of approval form before being allowed to upload to the Audio Portal would be the most adequate way to go about it. I see that kinda thing works well for mastodon instance sign ups 'cuz I don't see a lot of spam coming from the ones that require human approval to register an account.

I don't think letting supporter status bypass that approval would be the wisest decision, because while it would stop dumb kids who'd need to ask their mom for her credit card to upload AI spam, I'm not so sure it would stop the AI tech bros who have spent half their life savings on the latest GenAI scams already. I'm pretty sure they could easily afford the 3 dollars or so it costs to be a supporter.

Funnily enough when I first started uploading music to the site a few years back I thought that was how this system worked. Honestly I think it really should work like this, one single user could be very wrong with their judgement.

I think it would be more so an attempt to poison the internet entirely. This kind of GenAI spam is affecting everything at the moment. Big reason why I don't really trust search results anymore, always need to triple check everything if the date of a given post is too recent.

First, the Geometry Dash drama with copyright songs, and now AI.

im glad that the site doesn't allow AI, because the AI is bull$hit.

I think the audio portal is one of the more used portals (after art), because, obviously, upload music.

Glad of the new rule!

If some AI-Fan or Music Stealer are see this, please dont react me bad.

I will block them.

The incoming UK regulations are putting pressure on websites to use more AI, with things like automated content moderation.

These are fantastic additions to the audio portal! I really like them, and I haven't noticed any bugs.

I fully support having a system that requires a person to have Supporter Status to upload audio.

That would solve the majority of issues very quickly. It's the easiest way I can see.

People hate reading. What if we had animations or interactive experiences to explain how things work, with visual cues? Even if someone didn’t understand English, they could still get the main idea quickly. The animation should be crazy so that people will remember it.

What if someone made a movie that explained how this place works, with lots of tips and tricks, and made it funny?

Maybe people would be more willing to learn.

There's so much good here. What needs to be done is finding a way to explain it to someone new in a way that makes them want to stay and keep coming back. It has to be communicated clearly, and be easy to understand.

-- -- -- --

This is a concept, we could help start a Review Patrol!

A group of users could come together to form a crew, where they decide, 'Alright, in this portal, we’re going to review or comment on the 25 latest submissions.' I think this would really help bring more activity and interest to the site. If we build a reputation for guaranteed interactions, it will make a big difference in getting people excited about being active and being part of the community.

One idea there could be awesome Volunteer Sponsors for the Review Patrol. The Sponsor would stay anonymous until after they post their reward. The Review Patrol would have guidelines for a review should be. Once a review meets those standards. After completing the rounds, they could potentially earn a reward from a Volunteer Sponsor.

Let’s say there’s a thread where members of the Review Patrol click the heart. The thread would only show people who have earned a reward. Volunteer Sponsors would also be notified when someone earns a reward.

And then thread would then be updated with who has aside a reward.

Then, the artist will send a private message to the reviewer and ask what kind of sketch they would like.

The reviewer will receive the sketch.

Members of the Review Patrol can also be Volunteer Sponsors.

Who’s on board for The Review Patrol?

Imagine a scenario where an art piece is flagged as AI-generated, and the art moderator is uncertain about its authenticity. We could implement a system similar to a moderation process in League of Legends, where a panel of users meeting specific criteria is randomly selected to review the art. These users can then vote on the authenticity of the piece, creating a collaborative and community-driven verification process.

It stinks but I totally get it if new user music uploads get locked behind supporter. Sometime in October I thought it'd be fun to go through the unscouted artists every day to find some diamonds in the rough (and I found some!) but an uncomfortable amount of it was just AI slop and that kinda sucked, I think any way of preventing those uploads is a win in my book!

Good luck moderating that with all the chatGPT tools nowadays.

Gotta go the old piracy forum route: mod approved registrations only.

Now, on a more serious note. Could you make it so certain requirements are met before even being allowed to upload? e.g. account being active over a week, having a profile pic, limiting the posts of 1 month old accounts to 1 a day, or similar stuff.

Thanks for taking the human aspect of art seriously :)

Can be helpful but only gets ya so far, automated content moderation :/

It should really go, bot > human > action taken, when it comes to more complex things.

Back to AI in general, god - nauseating uncertainty. I am a believer in us being near the top of the curve in terms of AI models, and that we’re really not getting much better than this, but it still stands that the methods to scam and spam (not new problems for NG, but still) are evolving, and it sucks ass.

I’m an optimistic person in general but eugh, I dunno what’s gonna happen with AI! I’m hoping Scouting on the site can evolve with it without putting actual human beings off!

Hi CrazyGears! This is a good idea, I think it is implemented, the other art mods talk to each other when they're unsure about the authenticity of an art piece. That's just what I think. I've been wrong many times before, and I'm happy to be proven wrong.

We can ask @SourCherryJack, what does he think. He is an art moderator and has dealt with many many many flags!

Newgrounds Wiki: Site Moderation

They're all possibilities but are also things AI or determined kids could work around... Will have to see how crazy things get.

I was definitely expecting problems regarding AI to come up eventually. I wish people read the guidelines more. I’m hoping it doesn’t have to come to the point where Supporter status is required to upload music, especially since I’m not in a position to give anything… I couldn’t imagine me not being able to upload anything here. Then again, with the increase in this AI audio stuff, I could see it happening. I wouldn’t have a problem with it if it’s for the better.

At the very least needing to be scouted (by multiple people?) or a supporter to upload seems like a good step. I do wonder how new artists who haven't made a following yet would be able to grow in this case though, if they can't pay for supporter and don't know anyone who will scout them. Maybe a "newcomer" audio forum/thread that allows serious non-scouted artists to show their stuff to the established artists? I really appreciate the way i was able to start from zero and slowly build a following here just from consistently uploading tunes and it would suck to not let future musicians benefit from that. But i totally get why things will need to change too. Here's to seeing how this goes in 2025!

Good work, Tom! AI Music is dogshit, and it's unfortunate that it is a continual issue.

I really hate to ask a worst case scenario, but will there reach a point newgrounds is completely unworkable because of AI?

Can't wait for Best of November,

That’s mostly my problem. Those who are authentic and want to start off here but can’t because of a paywall barrier seems like a roadblock. It all feels a bit frustrating to me…

I love those new audio portal updates!

Does everybody watch this flash animation in 2024?

To reduce AI slop on Undiscovered artists, we can probably make scouting a little bit harder. You will need 3 scouts to be scouted. Users scouted before the scouting update will remain scouted. I feel like accounts should be a week old or level 3 to upload audio, since most people uploading AI slop are barely new accounts. I think we can improve the AI audio filter (if there's one).