AI Art as character reference (And now some very unrelated conversation)

Argent Dawn
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This is one of many, many reasons I despite Twitter’s very design, which is biased in favor of sharing snazzy but shallow one-liners, while making any kind of civil discussion with well-developed arguments as obtuse as possible.

Which is the exact opposite of how I prefer to engage in any deliberation with higher stakes than “which brand of butter to buy for tomorrow’s breakfast”.

I don’t know if it was cynically engineered that way or it’s simply a pattern that emerged, but it practically seems made to radicalize and trivialize, split people into warring tribes based on rallying cries that they themselves don’t understand except on the most superficial level.

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ok. this is cool. not gonna lie

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All in all, AI art generators will be a useful tool in the future.

Only thing they could need is to have works generated from them to require a watermark with a model id and training set id if they are to be distributed.

Other restrictions just lends the entire system to be restricted to a rich-guys club only model.

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Well, as an actual artist myself, I prefer references made by the person commissioning me because they have more control over the details, which makes it a lot easier to draw a character with the accurace they deserve.

That being said, I don’t think a trp necessarily requires image references. Some people use art they ripped from google search, without credit, and that sucks. I frankly don’t find generated images much better than that. The only things making me not always care as much are 1) It weeds out bad clients if they’re content in using generic image generation 2) It’s not like you make money off of rp alone and a pretty image won’t change that.

I think image generation for an end product is lazy and produces the most boring results with the same plastic quality in most cases, because people using it generally only care about making trending on artstation pretty people with zero personality. Needless to say, as a troll and forsaken player, that appeals to me 0%.

A bad drawing that shows a character’s personality is infinitely better to me than a headshot with overly smooth lighting and janky hair of them looking slightly off to the right with a neutral expression.

When I go into rp, I go in it for the characters, not how many pretty pictures they have.

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728

I use tools like WMV and Narcissus to make character references.
I regularly commission art for my characters.
I write creative and in-depth descriptions of my characters.

I also use AI-generated images.

I don’t think it’s a problem, and people will use the available tools. One of those tools is AI generation of images from prompts and/or images and that’s fine. The stuff is being used and it’s still going to be used.

The problem with AI in the creative fields is that the consumer is such a small part of the problem that trying to convince them to stop isn’t actually going to do anything even if you’re successful. If you could literally stop everyone everywhere from using AI art for their character references, you’d still have a profoundly deep problem with AI because the majority of its use is in commodification and revenue generation.

AI is easily discernible and people are as free to judge and/or criticise users as users are to, well… use AI.

In this very narrow space, the space of art for character references, it’s clear that it’s so small a problem that the issue of stolen work is moot because the number of artists I see with “Commissions Closed” leads me to believe that they are genuinely not hurting for work at all.

729

This is a bad take if I ever saw one.

There are multitude of reasons for commissions to close beyond that they are raking in work or money.

Plus, you know, even if you see some artists that have closed commissions due to workload, that does not take away the issues with AI art stealing and using other artists art without consent, and all the other issues it also has.

I wish people would stop hand-waving this away with these kind of comments.

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Important to note that this is only the case at this time. It’s only getting better at mimicking as more data becomes available and that’s why we’ve seen calls to limit it from Biden, the pope, King Philip and a myriad of others - mostly listing those just to show how far-reaching this issue is rather than to imply royals, world leaders and religious leaders understand the nuance of midjourney or openai.

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Your own anecdotal “experience” in seeing artists listing their commissions as closed is a quite lazy perspective, especially when multiple artists and people otherwise involved in that community have spoken up in this very thread.

I’d recommend having a proper read through of all the points the likes of Acrona have made (especially with regards to all the lawsuits aimed at computer generated imagery and how it requires the theft of art in order to function at all).

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I don’t want to minimise what you just put flippantly, but there’s no easy way to say this, unfortunately.

I’m answering the OP at face value with my opinion, unmoderated by 700 replies which I’m not going to read through.

I get it, I’ve seen a lot of the arguments and replies before, and I’m aware it’s a lazy perspective, it’s supposed to be.

It’s purely my unfiltered opinion from my perspective, nothing more. It’s not water-tight, it’s not fool proof, it just… is.

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Knowingly being lazy isn’t really valid though, it’s still lazy. It gets a bit “bad faith”-like to go into a discussion in which many people have already pointed out a clear counter to your perspective, something you’re also already aware about, but you still refuse to read or acknowledge them for a completely arbitrary reason because you can’t be bothered?

That’s just being willfully ignorant and frankly, invalidates any point you were trying to make.

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At least news are starting to cover the issues with this stuff more and more, these are all from only the past few days

Related to the first news item regarding plagiarism, it’s possible that someone’s AI generated character is going to closely resemble some popular artist’s original work without the person generating it even being aware of it…

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735

Honestly, I am not a fan of AI, and have been highly sceptical to it, but recently I did use the AI creator on bing, just to test it out for myself for once. And there is this one picture that strikes my character perfectly, and with the descriptions made, I would like to comission propper art from it if any comissoners suits the artstyle I aim for. As I belive it would be hard to recreate the perfection of details without a comissioner. And of course, I am not the creator of the picture and will never claim to be, only willing to use it to further develop art for my character. I too like many here are tired of the similar same looking arts with just minor detail changes from others, and yes, I admit it is lack of creation on my part, and I at last wish to apologize to the real propper creators and commissioners out there.

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In related news:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67922303

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I think one of the things important to remember is… AI is a relatively new development. And as with any new thing, there’s no proper regulation in place yet, because with most innovations, it takes time to understand the new thing, what it does, and could be used for.

Fortunately I believe atleast the EU is already underway on forming proper legislation to regulate the use of AI. Once that happens, I’m sure other places will follow suit, and hopefully the creative occupations ( writer, moviemaker, artist, etc.) will be better protected.

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Fair enough.

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There’s no bad faith here, and it’s not an arbitrary reason at all. The OP asked a question, I answered. The discussion isn’t here for me because nobody here is going to change my mind. I’m not here for you, or for any of the other crusaders who rally against the use of AI.

For the record, I’m far from ignorant on this, in fact as someone who helps develop AI I’d dare say I’m rather the opposite but then internet claims are always a bit iffy so accept that however you please. As for my point? What point? I’m simply providing an answer to the OP’s question.

On the subject of using AI art as a character reference, is it okay? Yes. Why is it okay? It’s okay because a reference is exactly that, just a reference and often one that’s much higher quality than some clone-stamp picrew chibi.

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That’s all that needed to be said.

Using AI supports plagiarism and takes away jobs from people in the real world, hell one day even developers of AI may loose their jobs to AI.
Using AI art is still not okay and frankly one does not need art to represent how their character looks, that’s what your in-game model is for

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I’d argue that it very much is. You came into a thread, initially under the guise of just wishing to answer the OP’s question while also openly stating that you will not be discussing any of the counterarguments to your point because you just refuse to. Arbitrarily.

Doing so, especially now that you have outright admitted to have a biased view and very clearly refuse to even accept any counterargument because “it wont change your mind” is very clearly bad faith posting. You’ve come in to stir the pot, tell your biased and actively proven wrong view with a refusal to accept any of the corrections.

Then why join at all I would ask, but the answer to that is obvious as per my statement above this one.

You belittle and downplay the people who counter argue you by calling them “crusaders” in a very obviously negative remark while also refusing to address that you have been proven wrong.

You were initially very much ignorant, self-willingly so. You actively stated that you were being lazy because “thats the point” and that is very much ignorant. Your new little rant here shows that it’s more than just self-willing ignorance, but more malicious or sheer actual ignorance.

I have honestly no trouble believing you. Your recent post here very blatantly shows you speak from an incredibly biased, and seemingly quite upset POV. Which would put you in two camps. A completely out of touch techbro who refuses to accept that you are wrong on this. Or one who knows you are, but refuses to acknowledge this out of malice and because you support the grift. Neither options are good, but one is actively worse. Take your pick.

A completely needless statement. You’ve provided absolutely nothing worthwhile to the topic. Posting out of sheer spite and openly admitting that you will already not listen to or address that people have proven your statements wrong out of sheer arbitrary refusal puts you on the same level as a basic attention troll.

No actually it is not. Because the “tool” is rotten to its very core and the reference is already committing theft since it needs to steal from other’s work to even generate it.

Until that stops being a thing, if it ever will, it is just flat out never acceptable. And I have absolutely zero problem with outright shunning its supporters. Unaware users who simply don’t or didn’t realize the issue is one thing. Those you correct and let them know the reason why its bad and wrong. That’s what the thread is for.

You are however not in that camp. Far from it.

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why did we have an entire thread of argument over AI generated images when this meme just summed it up immediately, damn

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