So the Mario Kart Wiki is shutting down. This has come as a shock to many developers of mods for the game. Fortunately, a replacement is said to launch shortly after the shudown. And while that innitially seems like a saving grace, We need to consider why the wiki is even shutting down in the first place.

Now, Why is it that the wiki is shutting down?
I have been given various reasons about why the wiki might be shutting down, but the most prevalent one is cuz the lead of wiki is taking issues with being called out for being an AI user, and it has lead to so much backlash, he is genuinely considering quitting the Mario Kart Wii community as a whole.
I must say that I only partially agree with what is happening. While I do agree that AI has no place in the Mario Kart Wii community, as it is currently being used for disgusting purposes that are problematic to say the least, but I have in the past gone on record in saying that I believe AI is okay to be used. My opinion on that has not changed. The era of AI is here, so you might as well use it. HOWEVER, if it is used in production of any product that will be shipped to the end user, it should be considered a crime.

AI Usage.

To clarify, I am neither for, not agains the use of AI in actual software development. Like I said above, AI generated code has no place existing in products shipped to any and all end users. All code that is to be used by actual people should be authored by human beings, who actually know what they are doing. AI is only to be used in the act of troubleshooting faulty codes (E.G. going over error logs and spotting errors, particularly useful with large logs) and concepting (E.G. When you are still trying to prove the concept, in case you are trying to build something with a company, and need to convince the project leader that your idea can help the product. Or just to see for yourself if the idea is reasonable.)

But in most cases, AI has little to no place in the Mario Kart Wii community.

I believe that AI in Mario Kart Wii makes no sense. The only thing it could realistically be used for is Textures, which, comes back down to the debate of wheter computer-generated images can be considered “art”.
I would like to preface this by mentioning that I am in fact a texture artist. And started my Mario Kart Wii Modding journey by making Custom Textures for a couple characters and a small handful of courses. And in my opinion, using AI-Generated textures kind of invalidates the point of Making Textures to begin with. I feel, that my hard work as a texture artist, is being undermined by people who AI generate their textures.

Using AI to build tooling is in my opinion not that big of a deal assuming it is exclusively for personal use only.
I have seen THF for example slopcode a code converter that uses his code maps for each region to convert geckos to their regional offsets. And he intends to use this to help with porting custom code.
This is fine, as none of the AI generated code makes it into the final product, it is a tool designed to improve THF’s ability to actually build features for the pack.