Quote from: SHARK on March 22, 2023, 08:28:18 PMI read a comment somewhere where someone said..."The giant Asteroid can't come soon enough!" *Laughing*

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

An asteroid isn't very fair to the Amish. Im not to that cynicism level yet. Im just more annoyed by peoples reaction to this technology. You can hand absolute power to an angel and be fine. Its just I don't trust people with more technology or power.

Quote from: SHARK on March 22, 2023, 08:28:18 PM

I read a comment somewhere where someone said..."The giant Asteroid can't come soon enough!"

I tell my family the same thing at least once a month! I'll sit on the porch and laugh as it hits. It's good field sanitation: burn pits!

I will say, it beats the fuck out of poser art. That stuff just makes me die inside when a "professional" company uses that crap.

Ethically? I await the day when middle and upper management are in danger of being replaced by AI, and we see some serious Butlerian Jihad efforts from people who pushed these AI algorithims. 

Artists are just joining the long line of artisans that have been replaced by technology over the ages. It's awful for the artists, but it's unstoppable. Nothing like this ever goes back in the bottle.

Anything AI creative makes me think sex and masturbation. If you can't manage to achieve the sex, there is always masturbation as a close second - and you know that the mediocrities who settle for masturbation will be telling everyone just how awesome it is, and if they say it enough times then they will even believe it.

That is what is happening now with real creatives vs AI creations.

This won't change anyone's mind. The masturbation fans have already accepted the least common denominator of blandness in creative endeavors is 'good enough' for them. They are as complacent and satisfied as a mushroom growing in shit.

Doesn't mean the rest of us are.

AI art - seems to work best when people take it as a base, then add a human touch. Hands & eyes especially!

80% unemployment - hm, one thing new tech is doing is recreating the cottage industries of yore. These days I buy my D&D minis and scenery from bespoke printers, one guy with a printer in his garage, not big companies. Likewise my D&D/FRPG books. Internet communication, home printing -  these things create jobs as well as destroy them. There are certainly a lot of people in the left half of the IQ curve whose prospects seem a bit bleak, but that's been the case since the 1980s. Governments can help somewhat by doing the Trump anti-globalist thing and encouraging onshoring industrial production. I think the IQ 105+ creative types should still have opportunities in Brave New World, though.

Quote from: S'mon on March 23, 2023, 03:03:04 AM
AI art - seems to work best when people take it as a base, then add a human touch. Hands & eyes especially!

80% unemployment - hm, one thing new tech is doing is recreating the cottage industries of yore. These days I buy my D&D minis and scenery from bespoke printers, one guy with a printer in his garage, not big companies. Likewise my D&D/FRPG books. Internet communication, home printing -  these things create jobs as well as destroy them. There are certainly a lot of people in the left half of the IQ curve whose prospects seem a bit bleak, but that's been the case since the 1980s. Governments can help somewhat by doing the Trump anti-globalist thing and encouraging onshoring industrial production. I think the IQ 105+ creative types should still have opportunities in Brave New World, though.

Whenever I've been unemployed, I've always had multiple plans. Started working on as many of them as I had time for, and then ended up sticking with the career path that got me results first. Even when I'm working I've got multiple plans, although obviously less time to set them into action. Whatever industry you're working in, you should always have an exit plan, a different career you can pivot to. You should have a hobby that can potentially turn into work. And if that hobby was art and you got work as an artist, and are now losing that work, then you have the option to switch back to what you were doing when art was just your hobby.

Quote from: Zelen on March 22, 2023, 07:40:21 PM
RPG industry will be completely different (& glutted). Anyone will be able to create whatever they want, and there won't be a significant production quality difference between "D&D" and "Fantasy Heartbreaker."

That's a future I can live with.   

Quote from: Ratman_tf on March 22, 2023, 09:43:22 PM
I will say, it beats the fuck out of poser art. That stuff just makes me die inside when a "professional" company uses that crap.

The problem with Poser art is that there is a massive gulf between what you can achieve with old freeware versions (less features) and the free models that come with or can be scraped off free sites, lack of experience, and no postwork (i.e. the stuff you're thinking of) and the results you get if you actually sink a few hundred bucks into the most recently versions of the software and actual professional model resources, then take the time to learn the program, and are familiar with the more advanced features of Photoshop to apply to post work to your renders.

And even the bad stuff at least has a human brain (and authorized use licenses for the use of pre-existing 3d assets) doing the design work, not a massive array of on/off switches running someone else's coding on a massive collection of art whose legal use for that purpose is dubious.

Quote from: Grognard GM on March 22, 2023, 10:02:00 PM
Artists are just joining the long line of artisans that have been replaced by technology over the ages. It's awful for the artists, but it's unstoppable. Nothing like this ever goes back in the bottle.

I fully agree. Craftsmen lost their jobs en masse as a result of industrialization. There is no reason why "creatives" such as artists should face a different fate. Attempts to stop such developments may temporarily slow them down but are ultimately doomed to fail.

Quote from: Rhymer88 on March 23, 2023, 10:23:44 AM

Quote from: Grognard GM on March 22, 2023, 10:02:00 PM
Artists are just joining the long line of artisans that have been replaced by technology over the ages. It's awful for the artists, but it's unstoppable. Nothing like this ever goes back in the bottle.

I fully agree. Craftsmen lost their jobs en masse as a result of industrialization. There is no reason why "creatives" such as artists should face a different fate. Attempts to stop such developments may temporarily slow them down but are ultimately doomed to fail.

They can always throw their wooden clogs in to the gears of the A.I. art mills.

This tech isn't going to replace artists, just make it so artists that use the tech can crank out hundreds of art pieces a day instead of 1 or 2. Clients are still going to want their art to be composed in a specific way or want all the art in a project to be consistent in look and feel. Anyone can pop a prompt in and produce a one off, but producing art specific to high standards is a lot more complex:



This isn't that different to the invention of the spreadsheet app or the word processor. Technology allowed skilled accountants and typists to force multiply. This could mean that people in those positions that stayed on pen and paper/typewriters eventually lost their jobs. But for those that adapted, they didn't get fired, companies just scaled up the work they could do more with the same staff levels.

Specifically for RPG products, rather than a game like Shadowdark having multiple artists I'd expect the future will have writers/producers working with a single artist, creating multiple output portfolios based on the client's needs and sending back hundreds of images the client can pick the best of and even request further iterations on. People will still be employed, but the quantity and quality of art will improve and the individual project art costs will likely stay the same.

Budgets likely won't change, just the amount of work you get back per $ spent will be going way up.

AI is not a problem "per se", it is only a tool. I might still hire an artist to do that stuff for me with the right prompts, I think. For now, I prefer using art made by people.

The danger is keeping AI in the hands of a few, through government regulation and monopolies, A really "free AI" could be great.

Of course, giving god-like powers to AI will likely destroy humanity. But using it as a tool for RPGs might be very positive.

While DAZ/Poser is uncanny valley stuff.  It is great for setting up control nets.  I used a random DAZ image to make a canny and depth field control nets and then told Stable Diffusion to render from that.  Here's the results of three different model sets using the same prompt.  Very consistent pose/composition, gotta love the control that I get over the AI to play with the render style and make the images that I want.  AI collaboration is the way forward.

We tried to find an artist. The only people we could find who listed prices we could afford and whose art we liked, we are pretty sure are using AI art. (They offer unlimited changes for no change in cost.) A close second was photomanipulators.

If/when we make actual money at this, we did find some very professional, very expensive people.

We do not have time to spend days and days wasting our time asking people who won't post prices (or if they do commercial work) what they would charge for something. Especially for a low-end request.

We spent several days looking for an artist. In less than that amount of time, I installed Stable Diffusion (https://github.com/cmdr2/stable-diffusion-ui#installation) grabbed 3-4 alternative models from Civitai, and we made what we needed.

And it looks pretty good.

We've pretty much said, we'll just look at artist alley at conventions not stress about it. Professional RPG publishers I've talked to indicated they find one or two people they can afford and deliver, and use just them until they die or leave the market.