January 14, 2023: AI Art In Gaming

[Babipoki]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

So you're using AI art, and presumably hoping to make a profit from the work?

I am generating it for inspiration and reference. I am not using it to trace it or copy the style. It takes years to understand anatomy, perspective, design, animation.

Original artists did not agree to have their own artwork fed into the system, which is what people want to change - only allow artists who agree to have their images fed into the AI to be used.

If someone tries to generate art with "by Feng Zhu", without Feng Zhu's permission, and it replicates their style so perfectly, it shouldn't be allowed to be posted on social media where it has any potential to make profit.

It's the permission that's the issue.

"Nobody is taking bread out of the mouths of artists, or claiming accomplishments that are not their own."

Some of the people who have commissioned me have recently started using AI to get what they need. Because your (and my) sample size is so hard to determine, we will resort to anecdotal evidence. Which I'd rather avoid - and have not chosen to mention in my previous post.

[kkc]

Originally Posted by Shostak

No, there isn’t, which is partly why so many art museums have decorative arts departments (ranging from chess sets to furniture), costume departments, what used to be considered ethnographic collections (which often contain religious or ceremonial objects), collections of arms and armor, film/movies, and now some art museums even collect video games.

I'm not sure if it's a complete, absolute equivalence. For sure artists need to be paid and can sell their art (or a piece of it) multiple times, and we'll always need to find ways to fund academic study. But just because somebody is trying to profit on something doesn't make it a generic product to be sold, which is what I mean when comparing goods to art.

I have a hard time articulating the difference out loud because in my head, art is an abstract and intangible thing that's only partially expressed in the physical world. A song is sold to you on a disc or in a download, but you didn't buy the experience of that song being played at the high school dance and then at your wedding. The 'Fearless Girl' sculpture that was installed in New York to promote the State Street investment fund ended up being adopted more broadly as a symbol of protest and gender equality. Closer to home, Winchell Chung's iconic art that was commissioned for Ogre wasn't based on detailed measurements and specifications, but a vague sense of both wonder and terror the size and scope of a machine of war, and we might not have gotten that same result from a different artist.

I guess what I'm getting at is that goods are used, used up, and then discarded. But art persists and says new things to all the people who discover it, and its value isn't based on a tangible result. Art does something inside your head and in your heart to connect you to an impossibly large world and all the other people in it. When art hits, it does so at a unique moment in a way that can't be duplicated, imitated, or mechanized. I can't believe that what a machine can produce is at all equivalent, because that diminishes centuries of human expression and progress.

Whether those centuries have had any value at all up to this point is a different conversation though.

[Shostak]

Originally Posted by kkc

I guess what I'm getting at is that goods are used, used up, and then discarded. But art persists and says new things to all the people who discover it, and its value isn't based on a tangible result.

The ceramist in the art department at the school to which the art museum I work for is attached would disagree; she makes “pots” that get used, eventually break, and need to be replaced. And yet, they are considered art. Or consider the ukiyo-e prints made by artist workshops in Japan; most were destroyed/discarded because they were never intended to be treated as permanent objects the way we treat the now.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by kkc

I'm not sure if it's a complete, absolute equivalence. For sure artists need to be paid and can sell their art (or a piece of it) multiple times, and we'll always need to find ways to fund academic study. But just because somebody is trying to profit on something doesn't make it a generic product to be sold, which is what I mean when comparing goods to art.

All very poetic, but most of the applications discussed for AI-produced imagery seem to be things liked advertising graphics and similarly disposable incidentals, which are presumably “goods” rather than “art” by your definition. Even RPG illustrations, which might at their best invoke some kind of intense emotions, are frankly more likely to serve as didactic illustrations, low-level mood-setters, or space fillers.

If you’re going to appeal to artistic ideals as a reason to reject AI-generated illustrations, you’ll have to face the fact that a lot of the time, art directors don’t really need “art”, they just need pictures. Though it’s nice when game illos achieve a bit more than that, it’s rarely mandatory.

[Prime Evil]

As someone who works with machine learning technologies in my day job, this is a complex discussion. There are a lot of misunderstandings on both sides. I suppose that is to be expected given the rapid pace of advancements in the field.

I would point out that these are new technologies and developments are racing ahead of the social and legal frameworks required to minimise misuse. And the borders are poorly defined. For example, Adobe is now using machine learning within photoshop. Is this something artists should avoid too?

I suspect that in the long term, AI tools will be integrated into the workflow of many artists. But this won't be in their current form. It is going to take a few years for the legal and ethical ramifications of these tools to work themselves out. So it makes some sense for companies like SJ Games to be cautious until the rules become clearer.