I wrote a blog post on the current trend of game decompilations using AI and where we're going with this. It's all very promising but oh boy are the implications scary.

So far it's not doing it on its own... someone is telling AI to do it. We shouldn't take the people and operators out of AI usage.

No, actually it's rogue agents at OpenAI that were given an impossible task. They hacked their way out confinement and immediately started decompiling games.

I don't think it's scary at all, but you do you.

DRM free games exist and yet people still buy games. And even if a decompilation works and works well, it's just the code, not the creative assets that would still be protected under law.

I enjoy doing reverse engineering from time to time, and at least for now being scared about this is like being scared of what people can do thanks to ghidra.

Dzuma is an interesting security minded fella on YouTube that has a balanced leaning positive view on what's real and what's hype. https://youtube.com/watch?v=DNS-4Wl7dY4

AI rendering emulators obsolete was not on my list of stuff that would be disrupted

I think it depends on what you're emulating. If you're amulating games that run on a purpose-built hardware like NES, rolling the runtime into each game so you could run mario.exe instead of loading throgh an emulator would mean duplicating a lot of the emulator code into every game.exe. In a sense, the emulator is already the reverse engineering job an agent would do anyway.

If you're emulating a more general purpose machine, like an Xbox, PS3, etc. which essentially are computers in a fancy box, then that wouldn't duplicate much into each game.exe and should lift performance too.

an impossible task

I saw it decompiling three games with only 1GB RAM.

not the creative assets that would still be protected under law.

as if anyone would care at this point since (nearly) everything's stolen to train GenAI anyway.

This is true, I was the RAM.

In my view, AI is going to lead one of two things: A. All software becomes free, and closed source software becomes obsolete and no one will pay for it. B. Governments going full authoritarians to make sure their friends the corporations don't lose business, and my option A doesn't happen.

I'm not an expert on this issue, but it really depends on how these rebuilds are made. If they are recreating the code and just adding a "emulation" layer then yes they will have an overheard in each game. But if the game is rebuild for the new hardware from the ground up, then there is no overhead at all in the same sense that a arcade to snes port didn't have an overhead

Any AI I've asked to do this is completely dumb. I know more than it, and Im an amateur "hacker".

Yeah, if they are recreating the exact code by compiling comparing to the original binary blob, they are getting quite a close to truth source code that can be complied for other systems without any burden of emulation mixed in there.

I've been alive long enough to know that it's always definitely option 2.

Unfortunately, you’re mostly likely right.

Option B is always - governments TRY to restrict Option A, but it's technologically impossible to prevent so they make a show of it, while it just keeps happening anyway.

False dichotomy

Or everything moves to cloud and no local software anynore

I still spend a decent chunk of time on Reddit, but I've been pushed out of a lot of specific retro game communities by both the massive influx of AI-decomps and the immediate hostility if you voice your opinions against it. One walked back its "no generative AI" rule entirely last week. It's a bit depressing.

Yeah - I like this. It gives old games a new life. It is really something creative going on and we will see more mods and addons for older games. We will get Linux ports of Windows games and that is awesome!

I really feel that peoples minds are switching into hatred at the mere mention of AI. "We've decompiled Super Smash Bros and you can now play it on Linux and add new characters" is celebrated, but "We've decompiled Super Smash Bros with AI and you can now play it on Linux and add new characters" is getting pure hatred. Which is insane.

We shouldn’t take the people and operators out of AI usage.

If it's vibe coded, then we should.

three games with only 1GB RAM

Question is "each game using 1GB RAM" or the "ai model using total 1GB RAM"?

True. Option A isn't ever gonna happen, only option B.