Regarding the AI graphics discussion, this might be a hot take to some people, but honestly, good AI generated art has a shitton more warmth and "soul" than all the creepy Honey Select and Daz Studio fare that's flooding this site.
Now, that might be only because the AI's mimicing the styles of talented human artists who put that soul there, but it's still the truth.
I agree with this, and have been a bit aggressive in prior posts at people hating AI art.
Most of them don't hate how it looks (apart from the things like 6 fingers, 3 legs, or other obvious problems) - but rather they have taken up the "protect the artists crusade".
However, to me, that's the depths of hypocrisy.
- Where were they when software put bookkeepers out of jobs?
- Where were they when automation halved the workforce at McDonald's?
- Have they really never used a single self check-out in the grocery store, responsible for removing 50-75% of cashier jobs?
- What about AutoCAD getting rid of huge portions of structural engineers, as half of the work is automated now, and the engineer just has to double check things instead of solving structural equations themselves.
- Or how about phones getting rid of the need for operators?
- Or giant companies using automated phone systems instead of actual receptionists?
AI Art is nowhere near the worst problem caused by technology eating up jobs.
Software replacing jobs is simply the endless march of technology. Good artists will still be employed, because they can still put out superior quality and accuracy - they just can't keep up on the *quantity* that AI art is capable of. AI art can only do so much without hundreds of hours of practice, saved descriptions, terms, and other tricks to get the AI to output exactly the image you desire.
Just ask yourself, if you want a picture of a mountain to hang in your living room, do you find some random mountain picture on the internet, download it, and print it out on canvas to hang? Or do you find an artist or photographer and pay 5x the cost? Most people I know prefer to have "real" artwork on the wall, with a name and a person attached to it. Even if they could save 80% by using online images that weren't properly watermarked.
To me, the problem is half-assed AI art - but I also have a problem with half-assed real art too.
And yeah, I'd rather see decent effort AI art over the hordes (and HORDES) of 3D rendered games that all look 95% the same - and many of them even have the exact same plots with shitty writing.
If you ask me, we should judge games on the QUALITY of the net output (explicitly not just the art choice), not on whether it looks like they used one shortcut (AI art) instead of another (DAZ) to generate images. And instead of shaming people for using AI art, simply extol the virtues of people who go the extra mile to have hand-drawn art in their game (shout-out to all the games with that, I love it even if it means development takes forever).\
In this case, the game is shit. For now, at least. Too many bugs and issues. But it could have promise. But it's silly to treat it worse than those 3DCG games that sound like they were put through MTL despite *not* being translated. I'd rather play a game with mediocre artwork (ie AI art) than suffer through 1000 lines of garbage dialogue.
Developers will use AI art in exactly the same ways that they've been using 3DCG. To avoid using expensive artists - because illustrating a game is a TON of work. Just look at any AAA studio and how many people work in asset development. Why is 3DCG okay, but AI art isn't? Usually, this boils down to "AI is stealing art from artists & remaking it". Except when it isn't. There are devs who train their own AI art. You can't tell them apart at a glance, because it's still AI art. If you wanna be outraged at "art theft", go for it. But don't pretend the problem is AI art. The problem is immoral people who will use any option to plagiarize. And plagiarism is nothing new, ESPECIALLY in the adult games venue. Yet for some reason, it is suddenly 100x a bigger deal if you're talking about AI art. And nobody has a good reason for that.
Except hypocrisy. People want to be outraged, and this is just an excuse. They don't really care, but being outraged makes them feel morally superior.
/rant