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As an indie game dev with an insanely low budget, I'm looking forward to the time in the future where people stop giving the random fuck they're currently giving about the use of AI gen content so I can safely build my game with higher quality assets without the fear of a mob of angry consumers flooding my steam page with bad reviews. It seriously boggles my mind why this is even a trend right now. People need to realize we're saving money where we can so we can improve the quality of the product elsewhere! I'll now have more enemies in my game because I no longer need to hire a concept artist for the general concept. I'm empowered to do that work myself in a few minutes of chat prompts, and I'm still hiring 3D Artists to bring that concept to life.
Please people, chill the fuck out and let the industry adjust appropriately to this amazing technology. Y'all sound like those that protested the use of cars when the horse lost it's job to it.
The problem is that there's a lot of indie artists out there trying to make it as hard as you are. Indie artists whose work has been fed into the models you're using without their knowledge or consent and who don't see any compensation. In a perfect world, AI art wouldn't mean artists not getting money, but as you said yourself, you don't have to hire them now. So now artists have fed into a system that returns very little if anything to them (unless you're more likely to hire an artists who uses 65% AI in their art than someone who uses none)
Artists are getting replaced by machines, just like when blacksmiths were getting replaced by machines.
People are losing their livelihood, so the backlash is normal and to be expected.
I think that in your case, considering the context around AI, you should use it and be transparent about it. Some people will be mad, but what can you do?
Transparent about what? I'm not going around listing all the tools used to create my game, use of an LLM for image generation should be no different. If I get asked, sure I'll talk about it, but I'm not going out to announce it.
The use of LLM is different because it is a new disruptive technology that has not been properly accepted by society and does not have the proper laws yet. People are losing their livelihood over it, so it is not like using free assets on unity marketplace.
Considering all the debates and lawsuits around LLM using copyrighted work to train their data on, you could put in your listing that assets were generated with LLM. You are transparent from the get go, the people that will be mad will get mad, but at least it will be upfront.
If you don't announce that you used LLM and people figure out that you used LLM assets, the backlash risk being greater than announcing upfront that you generated assets with a LLM.
An LLM does not gemerate images, but text. You probably meant image generation model
Hi, I’m a hobbyist game dev who has dabbled in using Stable Diffusion to create game assets. While AI is fundamentally just a tool, and there’s nothing inherently wrong about using it, it does matter if you’re using a model trained on copyrighted work. In that case you may be stealing an artists work and using it in a commercial game without credit or payment, or even really knowing it was their art that was a basis for your asset.
I suspect there are/will be models trained entirely on open source assets or from artists who have been paid for this express purpose and whose licensing allows for commercial usage from the output. In that case, it should be safe to use and you can credit the model used in your game credits.
For now, because I don’t know of any useful models like that, and Steam is not allowing games with AI assets of any kind, I’m steering clear of AI assets.
The whole fuss around the Magic/Wizard of the Coast shenanigans is about an artist using the Photoshop AI fill tool that's trained on images 100% licensed by Adobe. Ie the mob does not care about the facts only about being outraged..
The fuss is that WotC said they were going with human art over AI art, used AI art for marketing, and then denied it when it was blatantly obvious. It's pretty understandable that a company that built its brand on gorgeous, original art would get blowback when it tried to use algorithmically generated content.
Which is fair, I agree that they should have been honest from the start, but I can't envision a world where that also wouldn't have caused a riot. Shame it's impossible to know now.
That is useful context. Seems like WotC did the right thing here given their previous statement. There are better things to criticize then over then.
The problem, as you have rightly pointed out, is money. I'm going to assume from what you said that you are not a multi-billion dollar company. If you are, please disregard the rest of this comment..
When WotC and others like them use AI assets instead of hiring artists, it means that they have to give less money to working-class people to create their product, but they will still charge the same for it. This leads to even more money being siphoned from you and me into the pockets of giant corporations and their disgustingly rich owners.
(This is in part what the actors / writers were on strike about recently - not wanting AI generated content taking them out of a job and not giving credit)
As it stands in America (WotC's home) right now, people need money to be alive. It's a ridiculous way to run the world that you need to buy food and shelter, but that's not changing any time soon. This is why AI and other automation is such a problem.
When you use AI to help build your game, it is a regular person (you) who is benefitting, not a giant corporation. And as you said, without AI then your game is less likely to progress and no-one gets to experience the work and passion you put in.
Bonus thoughts: I'm all for taking away people's jobs and replacing them with a universal basic income, or doing away with money all together. Why should people need to spend 40+ hours working when a machine could do it better? Let people be free to pursue their passions and goals without needed to worry about where their next meal is from. All of these wonderful technologies that humans have created should be freeing us up. What we need is for our political and societal structure to catch up with our technology!
I agree with you, but then the question is : what is the threshold when it becomes not okay to use AI?
I agree that OP's use case is definitely a time where AI is beneficial. But if someone has, let'd say 10k in bank, is it acceptable then? 50k, 100k?
The real answer is it's not up to me to decide. But since we're talking hypothetical and it doesn't matter anyway...
My first thing would be that money is a concept that should no longer exist. It served humanity well as we progressed, but we have reached a point now where there are enough resources to go around if they were utilised and shared correctly, and money and the greed it causes is now holding us back. So I would prefer to just have your question be meaningless. There are plenty of people who would love to be artists but can't afford to stop working. There are plenty of people who would love to create products to use that art, but can't justify the financial risk. And there are also a lot of people who want to use generative AI in their project. There's enough room in the world for all of us.
And now to answer your real question: £10million. That's my threshold for "rich person" in general. It's enough money to be set for life and any more than that is greedy and other people or charities could use your money better than you.
I appreciate the thought and I agree with you. My question was open ended and not directed at you.
It would be nice indeed to go into the post scarcity society you describe where everyone can be whatever they want.
I guess my point was that it's a limit that society will eventually put in place, but it will be tumultuous before that.
It's the artists that WotC hire that choose to use ML generated content in their art, WotC themselves already had a "no ML art" policy long before this controversy.
WotC was more a jumping-off point for this discussion, since I was replying to someone who was talking about his own use of AI.
(But realistically, we've all seen how WotC behaves recently. Chances are this is a test to see if there's pushback before they go for it for real)
I understand what you're saying, but in regards to your anecdote, and in my opinion, cars were a mistake lol
They're definitely useful but we shouldn't have gone as full in on them as we did. And it's not the loss of the horse I care about, it's the street car trolley that every city seemed to have but then removed at the behest of automakers.
Sorry to go off topic lmao, just wanted to throw my two useless cents in
With every leap in tech, there is always something or someone that loses. I just used cars/horses here as an example because I think it properly articulates the giant leap in efficiency that AI is providing content creators right now. That said, I hear your point on how the adaptation to cars had unforseen consequences. I'm just far more optimistic than the masses right now about AI, as I'm one who gets to directly benefit from it instead of it just being some toy to play with.
I think there's a massive difference in expectations between a small dev and a massive conglomerate like WotC. For someone like you, I doubt many would care about you using AI for the same reasons you stated. But WotC absolutely deserves to be taken behind the woodshed for doing it because they can absolutely afford to hire people to do it.
Please just let small indies asset flip with an abstract layer of stealing. For fuck sake, just let them! Fuck!
It seriously boggles my mind why this is even a trend right now.
because I no longer need to hire a concept artist for the general concept.
Why are people concerned about AI? /s
AI is obvious the future of applied arts but it will take it's time for people and industries to adjust. Not long ago CGI were not considered art at all.
@gapbetweenus @Ohi I guess concept artists don't need to eat any more.
Applied artist will need to adapt. I guess applied arts will move more towards editorial tasks. That's how technological advancement works - driving horse carriages was a job once. Like again CGI made a lot of classical applied jobs obsolete and people had to adapt or find a niche where their skill is still needed.
The bigger problem is who own AI and who profits from it. But that is a question we as society have to face and answer.
If your assets end up looking good, people will be none the wiser. If they look obviously AI made, you'll be in for a bad time.
Horses can't talk, idiot! /s
The problem currently is that it looks cheap and out of place a lot of the time. I have seen quite a few games that use GenAI to add Assets and more to their game and currently it boiled down to these options:
- imagery: random posters of some imaginery bands with unreadable text that looked like far higher quality than the rest of the assets in game. Also the imagery itself has no concurrency, everything looks different and nothing fits together
- LLM: the LLM conversations in the games have two major problems that nobody solved: the NPCs in the conversations respond with information that doesn't fit the game (e.g. saying things like "meet me in the park tomorrow") and of course the NPC is not in the park. The second problem is that the games can't interpret the responses, so they are completely dry. It destroys the immersion
The first problem can already be solved, but it takes a lot of work to get to the point where everything looks like it fits your game. I don't think anyone will complain about GenAI when everything fits your game.
But don't forget: We are talking about MtG here. WOTC sells MtG cards for an insanely high price and the art is something that makes the cards somewhat worth the price. MtG using GenAI would be just wrong.
People are just being mad that there is real competition. I would be mad too if my Job would get so hard competition, But the argument that they are stealing Art is BS in my Opinion. Art comes from inspiration, which comes from input from the World around us. If you don't live in total darkness with no connection to the World around you, you have gathered inspiration from other people's Work and used this to create your own. And AI does the same. But they will calm down and adapt. They have to or make room for people who can.