Why don't indie devs use AI-generated images as art?

[Ol' Willy]

codexers are like

"wow this is so much better than anything computers could make because of the HUMAN factor..."

This is how

anglo superiority

Looks like

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

I suspect most of them don't realize that they can. I didn't know you could actually use most of the art from these websites in commercial projects until this topic. Either way, there is some sunken cost reasoning, they've already bought the art or learned how to draw, and you're not about to waste that just because some AI-generated art looks nice.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

I suspect most of them don't realize that they can. I didn't know you could actually use most of the art from these websites in commercial projects until this topic. Either way, there is some sunken cost reasoning, they've already bought the art or learned how to draw, and you're not about to waste that just because some AI-generated art looks nice.

What websites?

Lets say I want some loading screens backgrounds done on the cheap...I can't think of any other use case for my project.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Good point, OP. Now we just need machine learning to generate entire games for us, that way we won't have to make games ourselves anymore!

Yeah, look how great Nu-Male's Sky turned out.

Also, the AI generates great speeches for the Vice President. If it wasn't for the speech-generating AI, would you have known that Ukraine is a country? And that it exists, next to another country?

 

[Pyke]

A big issue is just usability. You can get some really interesting designs and stills - but apart from using it as some elements in a game, its not really 'there' yet. Like - for background loading scenes perhaps, and character portraits - but if you want to take the step where you have a game character, sprite, animation, etc - AI art isn't useful. It's basically stock photographs. You could make a game if you had access to stock photography - but only very specific games could be made.

To the people it IS already useful to, they have artistic skill nessesary to USE it in interesting ways. But it's not going to replace game artists, or really help non artistic developers create usable game assets in its current form.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

AI still need to be trained on good art to produce good results.

 

[Üstad]

Azura statue

Unreal Engine hyperrealistic fantasy oriental gothic palace interior

Hyperrealistic unreal engine Arabian nights foggy

Painting of a giant cave with the biggest mining saw

Arabian nights palace interior

Wristwatch with Scythian engravings

Overall much better than I expected. It can be used in games but copyrights thing may be too ambigious.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

The reason is because everyone knows the AIs put hidden codes in the images, ala snow crash, to hack our brains and make us their slaves.

WAKE UP SHEEPLE!

 

[Lim-Dûl]

The hype behind AI is a psyop to acclimate the public to the idea of impersonal intelligence so that the """""""elite""""""" can do what they want and shift the blame for the consequences on AI's purportedly impartial, optimized calculations when things get ugly.

 

[Norfleet]

Well... are they public domain?

Actually, yes. Legally, a thing generated by a machine isn't considered the creative work of a person and therefore cannot be copyrighted.

 

[Hobknobling]

I suspect most of them don't realize that they can. I didn't know you could actually use most of the art from these websites in commercial projects until this topic. Either way, there is some sunken cost reasoning, they've already bought the art or learned how to draw, and you're not about to waste that just because some AI-generated art looks nice.

Well... are they public domain?

Actually, yes. Legally, a thing generated by a machine isn't considered the creative work of a person and therefore cannot be copyrighted.

The jury is still out on the legality part, but considering big tech companies can do what pretty much anything they want and just pay some legal fees as a business expense, I bet this won't be banned.

No matter that the entire thing is based on datamining millions of images from the internet without any compensation to the creators. I personally don't see that as a big problem as long as the rules are same for everyone, but unfortunately the current copyright legislation is pretty much the textbook definition of regulatory capture.

 

[Sitra Achara]

Good point, OP. Now we just need machine learning to generate entire games for us, that way we won't have to make games ourselves anymore!

https://github.com/Sentdex/GANTheftAuto

 

[thesheeep]

A big issue is just usability. You can get some really interesting designs and stills - but apart from using it as some elements in a game, its not really 'there' yet. Like - for background loading scenes perhaps, and character portraits - but if you want to take the step where you have a game character, sprite, animation, etc - AI art isn't useful. It's basically stock photographs. You could make a game if you had access to stock photography - but only very specific games could be made.

Basically, this.

However, I'd think that you could actually make a game out of specifically using AI-generated art. Maybe with the only manual change being that you make a texture tileable - but even that could be automated.

It would undoubtedly be an art style of its own. With everything looking at least slightly off, like realizing you're actually dreaming. But on purpose.
I could see it work if it fits the rest of the game.

 

[J1M]

I suspect most of them don't realize that they can. I didn't know you could actually use most of the art from these websites in commercial projects until this topic. Either way, there is some sunken cost reasoning, they've already bought the art or learned how to draw, and you're not about to waste that just because some AI-generated art looks nice.

Well... are they public domain?

Actually, yes. Legally, a thing generated by a machine isn't considered the creative work of a person and therefore cannot be copyrighted.

The jury is still out on the legality part, but considering big tech companies can do what pretty much anything they want and just pay some legal fees as a business expense, I bet this won't be banned.

No matter that the entire thing is based on datamining millions of images from the internet without any compensation to the creators. I personally don't see that as a big problem as long as the rules are same for everyone, but unfortunately the current copyright legislation is pretty much the textbook definition of regulatory capture.

It might be helpful to create a list of these services and their licenses. I'd be happy to be wrong, but I suspect most look very similar. AKA you can post generated pics on social media to help them advertise, but you can't sell them.

• Artflow.ai (portrait generation)
  • Terms of Service
  • CC-BY license
    • Commercial use, must apply same license to generated and derivative art
• Midjourney
  • Terms of Service
  • Non-commercial license
    • Threshold for commercial license: $1,000,000 annual sales, price unknown
• Pizelz.ai
  • Terms of Service
  • Can purchase image rights
    • Convoluted credit system, varying costs to generate, download, and buy image rights
    • Some free credits are granted each day and for publishing images on their platform
    • Actual cost if you were to be using this for production seems like it would be under a dollar per image

 

[rusty_shackleford]

all material generated on artflow.ai is CC-BY licensed.

 

[Humanophage]

A big issue is just usability. You can get some really interesting designs and stills - but apart from using it as some elements in a game, its not really 'there' yet. Like - for background loading scenes perhaps, and character portraits - but if you want to take the step where you have a game character, sprite, animation, etc - AI art isn't useful. It's basically stock photographs. You could make a game if you had access to stock photography - but only very specific games could be made.

To the people it IS already useful to, they have artistic skill nessesary to USE it in interesting ways. But it's not going to replace game artists, or really help non artistic developers create usable game assets in its current form.

- Illustrations to areas being visited - say, as in Thea. Would really shine in CYOA games with rich descriptions and without animation, like in King of Dragon Pass.
- Illustrations to items. This includes items lying in the inventory and their icons.
- If you don't have animation but just use tokens like Battle Brothers, you can use it for units.
- Background patterns for things like the inventory or UI. Many indie games use some hideous photoshop burlap and such.

E.g., you can have all the illustrations you want in a game like Sir Brante:

You can create an illustration for every interesting item like the dagger here. And you can make item icons. And you can make an icon for all the buttons. And you can make a decent-looking stony background.

Generally speaking, you can make an awful lot of stuff and if you know how to use photoshop but can't draw, you can create almost anything. E.g., make a texture for scroll, make a texture for a pattern, superimpose a pattern over the scroll texture, etc.

 

[d1r]

Why not skip the middleman and just generate entire games?

Because this will be the end result

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

• Artflow.ai (portrait generation)
  • Terms of Service
  • CC-BY license
    • Commercial use, must apply same license to generated and derivative art
• Midjourney
  • Terms of Service
  • Non-commercial license
    • Threshold for commercial license: $1,000,000 annual sales, price unknown
• Pizelz.ai
  • Terms of Service
  • Can purchase image rights
    • Convoluted credit system, varying costs to generate, download, and buy image rights
    • Some free credits are granted each day and for publishing images on their platform
    • Actual cost if you were to be using this for production seems like it would be under a dollar per image

i might add to the list:
- www.craiyon.com
with whom i had disastrous results
- www.openai.com
i waited months for the access, then they asked me my email, my name, my phone number, then i said fuck off.

 

[FriendlyMerchant]

AI should be banned from making pictures because they are terrible.

 

[J1M]

AI should be banned from making pictures because they are terrible.

Need to set a precedent by banning hipster artists first.

 

[Alphard]

Imagine the decline of our society when AS ( artificial stupidity) algorythm produced images are on par or better than human ( lack of) creativity .

 

[rusty_shackleford]

anything that generates stuff as good as midjourney but doesn't require a d*scord account?

 

[V17]

Imo anyone who says that "real artists" don't use shit like AI generated art has no idea how most commercial graphic artists work - and I definitely don't just mean shitty formulaic ones. Generally creativity doesn't come from being a genius who's getting ideas out of thin air, it comes from having a huge mental/physical/digital porfolio of stuff used for inspiration, being able to find relevant things in it and being able to reframe, combine or derive it in interesting and novel ways. How well you're able to do that decides whether your art is original and interesting or derivative.

For this sort of work AI is a game-changer. The reason why it's not used much yet is because all of the truly good systems are just recently accessible, but using Midjourney for inspiration is already quickly becoming big and incredibly useful among concept artists. A good digital artist is easily able to repaint the obvious nonsensical AI details and pretty quickly convert a good AI image into actually usable concept art, so it can save a lot of money. It's not usable for everything yet, but it's impossible to say where the limits are yet.

Also, using it is not just limited to writing a random prompt and picking one out of 4 images, there is some skill in wrangling the AI to do what you need.

As for using the AI for generating final images usable in a videogame, apart from specialized neural networks for stuff like portraits I don't think we're technologically there yet. Although I suspect Dall-e 2 might be good enough for stuff like painted 2D landscapes for backgrounds.

 

[gurugeorge]

Imo anyone who says that "real artists" don't use shit like AI generated art has no idea how most commercial graphic artists work [,,,,] The reason why it's not used much yet

I agree with what you're saying about how artists generally work here (it's the same with music, and actually I think all professions, even the law), but aren't you contradicting yourself above? It would make more sense if instead of "don't" you said "wouldn't." Sorry for the tism

 

[Hag]

Imagine the decline of our society when AS ( artificial stupidity) algorythm produced images are on par or better than human ( lack of) creativity .

Not gonna happen since AI needs human-made references to train, so at very best it will be on par with the average of what it has been fed.