Yesterday I came upon a story that has wound up sticking in my gray matter, because what it foreshadows is going to be world-changing in a whole heap o' ways. It's an article on the wargaming website Spikey Bits, of all places. It has to do with this guy: one Huron Blackheart, of the Chaos Space Marines from the very popular Warhammer 40,000 miniatures game produced by Games Workshop.
A few weeks ago the company announced that Huron is getting a new mini. A glorious new sculpt that better reflects his malevolence and power. Here is the preview that Games Workshop published:
Looks pretty gnarly. I wouldn't knock on this guy's front door without my hat in my hands, my hands in plain sight, and a totally cheerful disposition. And he'd probably still kill ya anyway on general principles.
Anyhoo, that's the picture of the Huron model that the company published. And it wasn't supposed to hit the streets for another few weeks if not months.
But then this appeared:
That is not something that came about from the production cycle of the official Huron mini. This is not the master sculpt. This is the result of someone taking the picture of the preview, running it through an artificial intelligence program, extrapolating the details including the precise dimensions, and then prototyping the model with a 3D printer.
Think about that for a moment. Someone generated a product that can compete with the real-real-REAL McCoy, all from an image and some hardware that is now often to be found for use in your friendly neighborhood public library. And as the price point of those 3D printers continues to go down...
It's a miniature for a tabletop war game now. But what this miniature of Huron Blackheart represents is something far more drastic: a future where a lot of things in daily life can be "printed", including stuff that is copyrighted and patent-protected. Imagine some enterprising lad (or lass) in the not too distant future who comes upon an advertisement for a new athletic shoe that's months away from hitting the market. He or she could take the photo of the shoe, accurately render a three-dimension model of it, and have it physically produced in their home or garage. Produce a matching pair, no less.
It's a marriage of a number of technologies and it really is going to be something to be fascinated with and be wary of. It's both pretty amazing and also a bit frightening. What is going to be the impact of this on companies who devote millions on product development? On one hand this could be an avenue for home-grown inventors to bring their products to market without a middle man. On the other, it threatens to take away the impetus to create new products at all. What's the point, when a picture and an AI is all that's needed to make an item in competition with the legitimate copyright owner?
This absolutely merits keeping an eye on. I've a gut feeling we'll be hearing more about this in the near future.
2 comments:
Stretch out your supposition further. Imagine someone looking at a gun website and finding a picture of a new firearm. What's stopping him from using this technique that produced a game miniature and instead produce a working gun?
I would say that most 3D printers aren't up to snuff to generating a gun worth actively firing. It's going to need some sturdy metal parts precision machined to go along with the printed components. But some printers are working with metallic filaments and sintering is becoming something affordable to many.
Manufacture of sturdy firearms via 3D printing isn't here yet. But it's coming.
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