I don't know why people keep bringing this up, again, and again, and again, when I have actually answered this.
The only AI-art that is in this game are placeholder background images, of which there are maybe a dozen or so in total, all of which are eventually going to be faded out for real art, made by a real artist.
The consistency of the art, starting this year, is because I decided to give 99% of the work to a duo of artists that work together on the designs, rather than spread out the work over many different artists.
The reason for that, is because they're able to produce fast, work independently, and above all, manage to come in at a price-point that manages to make this behemoth of a project feasible.
I can drop the sketch-designs for any art piece you want as proof.
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That top-tier art you like probably refers to pieces like this:
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Which I grant you, looks incredible.
That artist also has an output-speed of 1 image per month. The last update had nearly 90 images. So if you wanna wait 7,5 years per update, I could have them to do the entire game.
I've said this before, if I was using AI, I'd happily cop to it (and I do in the limited instances where it's used), but I actually do employ actual artists, and I do pay them a substantial amount of money each month, to make sure you all get a game that I feel is trying to do something pretty substantial and ambitious.