Why so much hate toward AI art?

[artoonu]

AI was a wonderful tool to open up my creativity, add more content, raise quality, and speed up development time.

Unfortunately, Steam does not allow games using AI for now because it's yet unclear if using AI is 100% legal (trained on copyrighted images).
I was manually editing most of the images to ensure character design/clothes consistency. I honestly had much more fun using AI than drawing by hand. And now I have to return to my mediocre art and lower number of illustrations...

 

[ninjahedgehog]

I'll give my opinion right now based on my interest and leave ethics aside. Of course AI art has drastically improved in the past months and still continues to improve. While I understand the oppurtunity it gives to mediocre or amateur artists to put good looking CG in their games the reality it is the influx of AI CG has caused all these visual novels to look samey. Plus the whole issue has people questioning authenticity when people don't mark their art as AI generated.

I equate my issue with AI art games with the unity engine debacle. Sure, there's no short of devs making great things with bought assets but the avalanche of shit asset flips gave the engine a bad name. it's the same here. Personally I was burned when I found Divine Adventures when I was yearning for dbz porn games, I was burned to find a dragged out story with an inconsistent art style where buttons exist for no reason, choices are a lie and it just goes on for fucking ever. A pattern that I saw repeated in many AI art VNs. I'm sure there's people out there that can bend the A.I to their whim and prompt it with just the image they need and even fix it with their expertise in photoshop or whatever art program but too many people just use it as a set it and forget it tool that it's made the whole practice look bad

and now I look for that AI CG to see if i should avoid a game. Honestly I think I'm sick of looking at the prestine uniform shininess that is A.I generated smut

 

[RealityImagined]

There's a flaw in most models that makes generations all keep the same brightness which is the cause of most of the "samey" feel. There are several workarounds now that knowledgeable people are aware of and I believe SDXL (Uncensored release planned for mid July) has completely fixed it.

A quick test I did comparing negatives the other day where I'm also using a brightness fix:

And one with darker lighting:


There's always going to be lower quality work in any field but there are a few AI games recently where the devs knows what they're doing, and as always new techniques are increasing the possibilities.

 

[benisfug]

I'll give my opinion right now based on my interest and leave ethics aside. Of course AI art has drastically improved in the past months and still continues to improve. While I understand the oppurtunity it gives to mediocre or amateur artists to put good looking CG in their games the reality it is the influx of AI CG has caused all these visual novels to look samey. Plus the whole issue has people questioning authenticity when people don't mark their art as AI generated.

I equate my issue with AI art games with the unity engine debacle. Sure, there's no short of devs making great things with bought assets but the avalanche of shit asset flips gave the engine a bad name. it's the same here. Personally I was burned when I found Divine Adventures when I was yearning for dbz porn games, I was burned to find a dragged out story with an inconsistent art style where buttons exist for no reason, choices are a lie and it just goes on for fucking ever. A pattern that I saw repeated in many AI art VNs. I'm sure there's people out there that can bend the A.I to their whim and prompt it with just the image they need and even fix it with their expertise in photoshop or whatever art program but too many people just use it as a set it and forget it tool that it's made the whole practice look bad

and now I look for that AI CG to see if i should avoid a game. Honestly I think I'm sick of looking at the prestine uniform shininess that is A.I generated smut

I compared it to 3DCG earlier in the thread for most of the same reasons. Like DAZ or Unity it's just a tool that makes assets accessible to pretty much anyone, and that accessibility leads to a lot of really bad games. Overall I don't think much has changed.

 

[ninjahedgehog]

I compared it to 3DCG earlier in the thread for most of the same reasons. Like DAZ or Unity it's just a tool that makes assets accessible to pretty much anyone, and that accessibility leads to a lot of really bad games. Overall I don't think much has changed.

Yeah. I guess it's unavoidable whenever the next easy to use tool is released. You just gotta hope that babby's first project can act as a stepping stone for them to learn, adapt from their failures to eventually put out genuine quality.

 

[d7anime]

AI was a wonderful tool to open up my creativity, add more content, raise quality, and speed up development time.

Unfortunately, Steam does not allow games using AI for now because it's yet unclear if using AI is 100% legal (trained on copyrighted images).
I was manually editing most of the images to ensure character design/clothes consistency. I honestly had much more fun using AI than drawing by hand. And now I have to return to my mediocre art and lower number of illustrations...

‘it’s not that AI is banned, it’s that you can’t simply use default AI outputs without human editing. And you obviously can’t use existing IPs

 

[Nobody Cares]

‘it’s not that AI is banned, it’s that you can’t simply use default AI outputs without human editing. And you obviously can’t use existing IPs

Yep, AI will eventually be accepted but lazyness will be always scorned.

 

[Julie L Griffin]

Yep, AI will eventually be accepted but lazyness will be always scorned.

Yeah. I mean, we're seeing this already, with people going "yawn, another busty anime girl staring out at us, with a generic expressoin". I expect there will be limits on what you can do with simple prompting, leading to a divide between prompt-only and prompt+manual input, IE, more work.

 

[Donjoe81]

I don´t hate AI art. I just don´t care for these games if they don´t have animations, or if the art is too inconsistent.

 

[Tauro Thurius]

I don't mind AI art but I think it should be its own little genre. In my humble opinion good games require planning, creativity, effort, and a certain flair to deserve to be called "good". AI art eliminates creativity, effort and flair aspects.

I simply won't support any titles using AI art because they'll never truly be "art" for my humble self.

 

[Julie L Griffin]

That's fair, although there's a pretty big span between "only text prompts" and "used AI art to fill in parts of the background, or texture a sketch."

For myself? I use it because I can't afford to pay for art upfront, so it's a good place holder to show the people looking at my game what it's like. If they like it well enough so that the patron is successful, I plan to replace it with human art, but ultimately, nobody is going to even look at a game with no art at all.

hjowever, it's important to clearly let people know that what they're getting and what your intentions are. I've seen cases on DA, where people are trying to pass off clearly AI art as human generated art, and that's just not on, whatever your opinion of AI art is.

 

[d7anime]

I don't mind AI art but I think it should be its own little genre. In my humble opinion good games require planning, creativity, effort, and a certain flair to deserve to be called "good". AI art eliminates creativity, effort and flair aspects.

I simply won't support any titles using AI art because they'll never truly be "art" for my humble self.

My guy, are u really judging a game by if it meets your criteria of art? Some of the best erotic games I‘ve play are just rudimentary games with decent enough art.

what we’ll start to see are more gamemaker style rpgs with basic ai animations. We’re already at a point where you can use ebsynth and Stable Diffusion to create rough animations. Just a matter of some easy to use open source pipe line being established. we’re going to see an explosion in the amount of scenario games across genres and I’m here for it

 

[Tauro Thurius]

My guy, are u really judging a game by if it meets your criteria of art?

 

[d7anime]

I understood your position, I just dont think the logic was sound. To be clear, there's nothing inherently wrong with an anti-ai stance either.

 

[InfiniTales]

It seems to me that AI image generation has really excelled so far in making a particular subgenre of game, probably unintentional but nevertheless entertaining a lot of people. Namely: "Spot the errors".

 

[Jaike]

This works as a summary.

 

[yinAzura]

I think the reason why most people don't like AI generated art is either 1, it dabbles with issues of stealing other's work or 2, most people use it as a set-it-and-forget-it tool or as if it is an all-in-one wonders product.

Which personally I don't agree to point 1, but pretty much point 2 is evident. It links with the fact that many people still don't understand how AI works. The fact is AI is a "tool", and while tools can do the job it is designed to do well, it doesn't understand anything about what it is doing. Just to give an example, a hammer is good at hammering a nail because it is designed to do that specific task. Does the hammer understand what is hammering, or what is a nail? No, because that's your job to know or else you won't use a hammer in the first place.

But since many people thinks it's something equivalent to a person/worker/employee, we see many AI CG being given the parameters, let it generate, then assume it is a finished product and publish it. Obviously that's not what it is for. It needs the final touch by the artist, and if the person is not good at art then most likely that person is incapable of finishing the artwork.

I think AI generated art can be excellent at help polishing the work, improve some aspects like lighting and such, or shorten the concept art sketching process before the final version. Unfortunately, many users didn't see that and now it's a wasted potential. As much as I don't hate it, I think it's perfectly fine to hate people who use arguably one of the best tools available but only make junk out of it and sell those stuff.

 

[InfiniTales]

I keep having a hard time sympathizing with all the "stealing our work" arguments. A.I. does not copy/paste. In my eyes, it does exactly the same thing as every single human artist, be it painter or writer, has been doing throughout history: produce something that didn't exist before, but very much based on observing the work of those that came before. Absorbing and mimicking and using elements from that previous work that they like and prefer.

One difference is that A.I. doesn't pick those styles itself, it's being directed by the prompter. Who, again, like every human creator before them, is motivated by preferences based on observations of other's work.

All art today is a product of the collective art by humanity that came before. Any graphic artist using an "A.I. is stealing my work" argument should perhaps say to themselves, "Those concepts of perspective I'm using in my art? I 'stole' those from 14th, 15th Italian Renaissance painters in exactly the same way as A.I. has been 'stealing' my own work.". (That's just one simple example)

A.I. will create a shift in employment and jobs, yes. Does anyone really think that's new? When was the last time anyone met someone who said, "I'm a telegraph operator. " Or "I'm a telephone switchboard operator". And no telegraph or telephone switchboard operator probably ever heard someone say, "I work in the smartphone industry." Things change and evolve.

There'll always be those that try and make a quick and easy profit out of something new, especially when it's as revolutionary as A.I.

But I also think that there's plenty who are genuinely trying to make something to the best of their abilities using a brand-new tool that opened up possibilities that were not available to them before.

 

[standbygames]

Just asking. I saw some games with AI art posted in f95 and most of them receive a lot of hate from bystander.

Why though? Is it because people lost part of their soul when their fap to stuffs generated by AI overlord?

Well take one look at said games and it becomes obvious why. In the screenshots you see the characters and sometimes background looking different in every screenshot. Sometimes even like a completely different artstyle that dosen't even look like they came from the same artist lol. And because of the lack of consistency picture to picture they also have no animations. Animations are pretty much expected these days. Many won't play new games without animations anymore, so yea that's a huge issue with AI games so far. The only thing AI art can even attempt for now is those old school text heavy games/VNs with some static images and no animations. Which are kind of a fading niche at this point.

The AI just spits out a new interpretation for every new image prompt. There's 0 consitency, it's not remembering what it drew last time. You can generate thousands of images then edit the closest ones after but I've yet to see someone make an entire game look perfectly consistent to the point of being able to do animations. Haven't seen it, maybe I've missed it but I'm very doubtful it exists.

It's like you're watching a TV show and the actors playing each character change every scene... How is that not immersion breaking and awful? Not to mention the various defects they often have like messed up hands and what not, further breaking immersion.

I have no issue with the concept of AI or using it, at all. If it could give us even more quality games that would be a good thing. The issue is it kinda sucks right now in terms of what it takes to make a game. It's just giving us more lazy, crappy games. It can create an amazing image. But that's the problem, it can create AN image, one. Not a series of consistent images to make animations and then an entire game look like it all came from the same artist. There's progress being made on these fronts but it's not there yet.

There's just no reason to support these crappy AI games right now when there's plenty of other games out there with more effort put in and art that isn't immersion breaking morphing shapeshifter characters. I'll gladly play AI art games when they actually become good...

 

[monkgi]

Here's my opinion on the matter with a possible worst case scenario theory. With the way I understand AI art, it is an algorithm that scans through the internet's collection of images and pulls and compiles data on all of it. Then, using software, prompts can be made to compile a new image based on tags that the algorithm determines based on the data it collected (tags like hair color, eye color, body type, etc.) I think it's a great tool, and shows the advancement of technology. I am a firm believer of working smarter, not harder, which is what this is.

The problem is that (especially at the time of writing this) we are currently in the wild west of this technology. There are no laws or rules and no real regulations for this software. Art that people actually put time and effort into making gets pulled into the database that is then used by someone else, who very likely, put zero time and effort into creating art. Right now, the software isn't perfect, and work DOES need to be put in to fix the results, but that something time and more research can fix. One day, touch ups won't be needed in AI art.

I have used a few different services to create art (all non-published) and I can say, there is little to no effort (the only effort being using a few thoughts to come up with a prompt). To add to that, there are many people who use this service and paywall image sets that they created. This of course is a bit predatory to someone who doesn't know any better, and paints an unrealistic image of the type of artist that person is.

Additionally, if this type of software gets into a situation where it is determined legal for commercial use, it could lead to a situation where artists can't keep up, as the demand for actual artists begins to drop off. Of course to counter that, artists would have to step up their game and become better than the AI. Which sounds reasonable, but then remember, AI pulls data from art, so if the artists get better, so does the AI.

Now imagine if AI art services become official use and legal. Companies wouldn't have to hire artists anymore, when all they need to do is gain access to one of these services and just create the art themselves. Of course, artists need to earn money as well, so if an artist can't get a job by creating art, they're forced to move onto other endeavors. At some point the database that the AI pulls from becomes stagnant, and then everything starts looking the same.

This of course is a very crack dystopian theory.

This has nothing to do with this website, the people who use this website, or the views this website takes on unlawfully acquiring and redistributing software. We all use this website. We are all pirates. We are all in the wrong.

Can AI art be a good thing. Absolutely. Can AI art be a bad thing. Absolutely. AI art should be used like any other image software: a tool that enhances your own art. It should not be the end means for your art.