January 14, 2023: AI Art In Gaming

[RoboAdmin]

January 14, 2023: AI Art In Gaming

Read this article on the Illuminator.

[emigio]

that post reminded me this.
https://www.history.com/news/industr...ddites-workers
Didn't end well for them

[kkc]

In the spirit of respectful disagreement, isn't there a clear difference to be drawn between goods and art? The Luddites were certainly protesting a disruption to their livelihoods for similar reasons, but their work was always destined to be automated because it was something to be standardized and repeatable. By comparison, art at its best is a unique expression that's also representative of the state of a particular culture or identity. In rare but awesome circumstances great art represents a profound emotional state that all human beings can relate to. Even if we could trust that to an AI, I'm not sure that it would have the same ability to capture important moments in time.

Remember too that with art, we see purpose and intent that's assigned to or presumed in the artist. A lifetime's experience, framed by conflict or change, is what drives people to express something that can only be communicated in art. There's a reason why Steve's name on a game box matters, because I trust that the work he's involved in will be entertaining, include wry commentary on the human condition and will result in a game I want to play more than once. Curt Schilling doesn't inspire nearly the same amount of excitement, loyalty or spending from me.

I'm glad that there are game companies who are seeking to protect human artists and maintain demand for their services. AI art has its uses and purpose, but it also has limitations that would hold back games or whatever other media it ends up being used in.

[ravenfish]

Originally Posted by kkc

[...]their work was always destined to be automated because it was something to be standardized and repeatable. By comparison, art at its best is a unique expression that's also representative of the state of a particular culture or identity.

Unique is where you find it. Before the Industrial Revolution, each piece of clothing you wore was custom crafted to fit your particular body (assuming you were rich enough not to be wearing hand-me-downs). Mass production could not duplicate this aspect, but it could create a product that was nearly as good and far, far cheaper, so people ran with it.

[Archangel Beth]

Clothing is still done by hand. Cloth is automated, but cutting and sewing clothes requires someone at the sewing machine. They may "assembly-line" the garments (I don't know and am too fried today to do the research), but that cheap t-shirt you have? Was made by a human.

(But not woven by humans.)

[Celjabba]

I have mixed feelings.

On one hand, the reasoning exprimed above and in Chaosium article are sound, and in addition, the fear of the impact of AI reducing future illustrator work (especially beginners) legitimate.
Not to mention that without new human artists to feed new materials into the engine, the AI won't get creative and innovate on its own should it became widely used and diminish new art production.

On the other hand, I cannot draw, so if I wanted to publish for exemple a scenario, I would have 4 options:
-no art.
-stock art, seen everywhere and (especially) not tailored to my story.
-paying hundreds of $ for custom art
-spending a few hours feeding prompts to an AI and adjusting it.

And this is not abstract : For last week game, I made portraits for my pregens and major NPCs as well as a few landscapes to describe the setting, all done in a couple hours on Stable Diffusion, and while imperfect in some details, these pictures made a coherent whole tailored to my story details. If I wanted to put that scenario online for a price, many site will refuse AI-generated illustrations, and I certainly cannot pay a human artist price for something I may sell 20 unit for a couple € each...
And the work may be derived from (thousands of) other artists works, but it is certainly unique and not a straight copy of existing art, so it is not illicit use... or is it ? A very hard question to answer.
So ... mixed feeling, as I said.

[Shostak]

Originally Posted by kkc

In the spirit of respectful disagreement, isn't there a clear difference to be drawn between goods and art?

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.

[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.