Good.
Let them suffer, and reap what they sow in the most karmic backlash way possible.
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If you are really serious about this, you should stop playing WoW cause coding with AI is way more sophisticated than AI images and a lot of new source code for this game is generated by AI as well. AI changes the whole software creation, but software engineers just combine their old talents and AI and use AI as a tool of many.
I am optimistic that this might be a reasonable future for computer artists as well, using AI as a tool but not completely rely on it. This is also a way to bring back the soul into the AI images. For me, it is a chance and I love toying around with this new technology, but I admit I am very bad at drawing and for me it’s not fun to learn it. As an artist I would look at the dangers first as well.
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Because it’s an entirely different discipline requiring entirely different skills where AI assistance does not wholesale steal and copy the work it is based on.
Apples to Oranges
Edit:
In I.T. there is a saying “As long as a customer has to explain what they want, a Software Engineer will have a job in deciphering it.”
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To be extremely blunt, if you don’t have the skill to draw yet also simultaneously don’t want to improve it, then that is it really. You either continue to draw “bad” or you just don’t.
Trying to find a cheap way out to “success”(Get it to look better) is inherently lazy and scummy in my opinion.
I’d equivalent it to you wanting to sing, but you don’t have a good voice for it. So instead of taking lessons or training, or just doing it anyway, you just start to lip-sync to other people’s voice.
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I think this is worth noting.
While I do agree that using AI for public purposes is bad, I think “stealing” is a strong word. Using AI art is copyright violation (because you distribute a derivative work without the consent of the people on whose work the AI was trained) and plagiarism (because the AI doesn’t credit the original artists and passes its output as its own creation). But it’s not, strictly speaking, theft, because if you steal something, it implies the original owner no longer has it. This isn’t the case. When you copy someone’s work and pass it as your own, the original author doesn’t suddenly find their files deleted, but it’s still a bad thing to do.
This is important because corporations perpetuate the narrative that copyright violation is theft, which isn’t the case. Of course, they only do it when it benefits them, when it’s their copyright that is violated. This is important to keep in mind in debates involving things like piracy and DRM, because I believe that there are cases where piracy and DRM circumvention are ethically justified, even if legally they aren’t.
For example, suppose that I’ve bought a game and want to play it on a platform it was not designed for, but its DRM prevents it. It’s a single-player game, so anti-cheat considerations are not an issue. The company has already profited from me buying the game, so it doesn’t lose any money from me downloading a copy with DRM removed so I can play it on an unsupported platform with emulator software.
For another example, suppose that a game company has updated its old game with an HD remaster and now offers only the remastered version for purchase. I’ve bought the remaster. I also, just to make the argument more clear-cut, bought the original version long ago, but lost the installation CD. I want to make a screenshot of the main menu of the original game for an article on its evolution, so I can compare it to the remake. I think it’s perfectly ethical to download the original version from a third-party website, since I’ve already paid for it, twice, and I can’t download the original version from the original developer anyway.
My point is that we should be more conscious of the terminology we use, especially when the suggested terminology comes from hypocrites.
Speaking as a non-artist, my main problem with AI generated art comes from publishing it. It’s the act of uploading it to a public website for the entire Internet to see that I take issue with.
For something like a private D&D game, I see no problem whatsoever. As a player, I often use pictures I just found on the Internet to represent my D&D characters, and as a DM, I often use pictures I just found on the Internet to represent NPCs. Private D&D games involve acts that are technically copyright violations all the time, be it character illustrations, tokens, or maps, and I think that’s okay. I’m obviously not going to commission artists for every single NPC in my games whose audience consists of me as a DM and 3–5 friends as players.
I haven’t used AI generated art as a DM, but I don’t see it as morally different for a private game than using some human-made art I found in Google image search.
And obviously I wouldn’t, say, use ChatGPT to generate plot ideas, because that would be undermining my own creativity that’s part of my motivation for acting as a DM in the first place. (The other part is giving the players a game they would enjoy, and their enjoyment would also be undermined if they found out that their campaign plot was computer generated.)
Bottom line is, for a private game for your circle of friends, I don’t see a problem. Using AI generated assets (just like using assets scraped from Google image search or DeviantArt) would only become a problem if your D&D campaign became a widely popular streaming show, whether you profited from it or not.
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I’m late to the thread but:
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I don’t dislike them for art references to help you get a comm in the first place, at that point you’re not sharing it publically and not trying to claim credit. Similar private use (Such as RPG tokens provided you don’t try to sell or show them off) is also tolerable. People “steal” art from google images for that all the time already and it harms nobody (Better if you can share sources to your group though).
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Using them in TRPs etc is… iffy. Compared to an RPG like DnD on an online platform where you might have absolutely nothing to portray your character (And while I do approve of Heroforge, it has limitations and a particular art style that doesn’t vibe with every character concept, as it is designed with miniatures on a table in mind above all), in WoW RP you have… WoW itself, your character model. You don’t need art to show at a base level what your character looks like, more than likely the AI will be just as abstract and inaccurate as the game model will be.
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Claiming they’re “your work” is lol
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Claiming they were “hard to make” is lmao
I messed around with SD on my own PC and in a few hours got solid results, it genuinely is not difficult and imo not worthy of even being considered a skill unless you literally built the AI yourself from scratch (Which 99% of people certainly do not do). It took me a bored evening to figure out prompt language and how to get more specific and desired results. I felt dirty the whole time but published and uploaded absolutely nothing outside of showing to friend groups to prove the point.
If you want art for an RP character, hunt around for an affordable, good artist rather than use AI. Yes, those exist, you can get custom made reasonable art for nearly any budget if you put some effort into looking. Anyone saying “art is too expensive” is either a minor with 0 income or a liar.
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Character reference: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/561287824964452363/1179853859821207552/image.png?
(original character, do not steal)
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I played a virtual tabletop game as the gnome from ‘you’ve been gnomed’ for like a year.
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I am so sorry you see this as your only chance, but I feel like I must emphasise to you that being bad at drawing is normal. Every single artist you see was bad at art, it is a natural part of life. You are not born good at anything at all and you will make a million pieces of art you do not like before you create something you like.
If you are not willing to practice that is okay! You do not have to, but if it is something that is enjoyable to you, I do not see AI as your chance to “create” anything. You are effectively commissioning an artist, except one that will not receive anything for their labour. When you pay an artist you are not buying the art piece, you are paying them for the years they spent making bad art. I think you should consider supporting local artists, especially since there are so many that will work for free just so they can get the practice!
I apologise, but I unfortunately am very optimistic about the future! I and many others do not create because it is a service to be filled, we do so because we want to. I have very high hopes for the future of creatives, I apologise that you see it as such doom and gloom.
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Yeah, this; not everything AI is bad. AI tech is important, and good, in many engineering and medical fields for example. We’re speaking of issues specific to the current popular image generator models.
Spruggl, I genuinely don’t think you intend any hurt on anyone. I hope though that you understand through the many harmful examples provided in this and the previous thread linked to by Loras, why so many people disapprove these image generators in their current form.
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Agree
Use in TRP or any sort of non-profit area is fine.
These are also agree. I mean they’re ‘your’ work in the sense you happened to be the recipient of the output. But no, unless post-hoc work was done to the generated pieces they are by no means ‘your’ work.
And hard? No of course not, that’s the point of AI, convenience.
This is one option, but not feasible for all for a variety of purposes.
Put it this way, the hours you spend tinkering with prompts could be hours put into sketching or even learning digital drawing.
Y’know this vaguely reminds me of a common flaw I see in a lot of digital art. Artists that skip anatomy and perspective basics and go right for the pretty renders, colours and highlights. yeah it’ll “look better” at a glance but just like AI art the longer you look the more that is… wrong. Same with people buying those “How to draw Manga” books and starting from there… Many of those in the early 2000s in my social circle.
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Well, you can’t be good at everything with limited time. And why should I invest thousands of hours into a thing in my spare time I don’t enjoy at all? Moreover, the cheapest way to get to success is to pay someone else to do it. Would you also call it lazy to pay for a commission? It’s definitely harder to get a decent looking AI generated goblin or gnome than to make a commission. It’s the laziest thing to pay an artist… but it is a very good thing!
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I spend at most maybe 5-10 minutes. Then some time (hour or two?) afterwards in photoshop.
It’s not lazy to pay people to do work. It’s lazy to circumvent those people and piggyback off of their hard work and talent in order to get what you want, without paying them.
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Then your other option is to either use a tool like Heroforge, or simply don’t get art and write instead.
It really is that simple.
You can’t skip out on the basics! The fundamentals are important.
Sure, some people will have talent more than others, but it’s also a thing everyone can learn if they put effort in.
That is my point though? If you don’t have the time, or even self-admittedly don’t care, I think it is extremely scummy to still desire the outcome that requires you to have either the care or time. You just want it quick and easy without effort and I find that insulting as a view towards those that did put in the time and effort.
No becaue you’ve then decided “I can’t do this myself, I will hire someone who can”, you didn’t try to fake your way and then say “I did this :)”
I take quite a bit of issue with your attitude tbh, your whole view seem to be that “Making art is tough, it should be easy quick and free!” which seems like an actual spit in the face to artists who trained and worked hard for their images.
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That is a more than enough time to draw! A very good way of practicing that I do is set a timer for 5 minutes and try to draw as detailed artwork as I can in that time. It is very fun and you learn a lot! I encourage you to try it, I hope you find it as fun as I do!
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Sadly you don’t pay my sub.
Drawing is very fun, I agree.
Doesn’t make you immune to me saying that I think your viewpoint is wrong and I disagree with it.
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Looking at my old art, even as recent as 2 years ago, hurts because of this, and like, decade-old stuff I drew looks alien because I did the same thing
Then I got better and then looking at old art just becomes super encouraging. Progress comparison
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