Has there ever been a greater tool for the indie rpg publisher than AI art? If you are opposed to it, do you understand how it works?
1. AI art uses 0.01% of reference images, generating never before seen things.
2. The line between photoshop effects and image generation is very very blurry.
3. It looks pretty cool.

Is this asked with a straight face or are you being sarcastic?

'Cos after I looked at the art - the distorted coins and the dragon wing that seems to extend from the ridgeline of the beast's neck, I wasn't too sure.

Quote from: Hixanthrope on May 03, 2023, 03:21:42 AM
Has there ever been a greater tool for the indie rpg publisher than AI art? If you are opposed to it, do you understand how it works?
1. AI art uses 0.01% of reference images, generating never before seen things.
2. The line between photoshop effects and image generation is very very blurry.
3. It looks pretty cool.

Not this shit again.....

Quote from: ponta1010 on May 03, 2023, 04:48:38 AM
Is this asked with a straight face or are you being sarcastic?

'Cos after I looked at the art - the distorted coins and the dragon wing that seems to extend from the ridgeline of the beast's neck, I wasn't too sure.

yes im serious. don't compare it to the best art, compare it to rpg art and tell me this isn't cool. I'm actually not here to preach for ai, i want the discussion.

AI "art" is in its infancy. 10 years from now it will be so common threads like this will be like thread a few decades ago with tips to get extra speed from your 56K Dial Up.

Until it's decided in court, the legality of AI art is going to be a potential risk, particularly for those creators working on a shoestring budget.

Let's say a year from now a court decides AI art is copyright infringement and your product is loaded down with AI art. Do you have backup art ready to replace it in future sales (as a small timer I am presuming print on demand so at least you wouldn't have to destroy inventory)? Do you just have blank spaces now?

Until it's settled in court, using AI art commercially is something only outfits who could already afford real art (and are just trying to maximize profit) could afford to use.

Use it for images in home games? Sure.

Use it a freeware product you're just dumping on the internet? Tons of fan projects for established properties use copyrighted art and mostly get away with it because they aren't profiting off it and the IP holder views it as essentially free publicity.

But for something you hope to sell? Stick with Creative Commons or commission your own work.

Even if AI art does get the thumbs up from the courts, consider using real art (CC or commissioned) anyway just because AI art will be a dime-a-dozen. I'm sure an IKEA bookshelf is fully functional, but people still pay more for handcrafted hardwood bookshelves... specifically because it's handmade.

Quote from: ponta1010 on May 03, 2023, 04:48:38 AM
'Cos after I looked at the art - the distorted coins and the dragon wing that seems to extend from the ridgeline of the beast's neck, I wasn't too sure.

It's like a Liefield piece. Compentent in seperate chunks, but the whole is awful and wonky.

Quote from: Hixanthrope on May 03, 2023, 05:35:55 AM

Quote from: ponta1010 on May 03, 2023, 04:48:38 AM
Is this asked with a straight face or are you being sarcastic?

'Cos after I looked at the art - the distorted coins and the dragon wing that seems to extend from the ridgeline of the beast's neck, I wasn't too sure.

yes im serious. don't compare it to the best art, compare it to rpg art and tell me this isn't cool. I'm actually not here to preach for ai, i want the discussion.

Interesting that you mention Indie RPGs in your original post. I think people are excited about the idea of pushing a button and getting "free" art. But I think AI Art, like an AI GM, is a long ways away from producing anything satisfying that you can't get from (relatively) cheap Stock Art. (Or in the case of an AI GM, a Mad Libs adventure)
For now, I put it in the same category as that nasty Poser art. People are going to use the tool to churn out forgettable page fillers.

Quote from: Chris24601 on May 03, 2023, 06:55:02 AM
Until it's decided in court, the legality of AI art is going to be a potential risk, particularly for those creators working on a shoestring budget.

Isn't it already?

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/03/16/2023-05321/copyright-registration-guidance-works-containing-material-generated-by-artificial-intelligence

I actually have Stable Diffusion installed on my PC (although generally I use a laptop.) I've generated about 1000 images with it, so I think I can speak with some experience.

Realistically, while AI isn't quite good enough to be indistinguishable from a B-list human artist, it's close and will clearly get there in the near future, and competing with A-list artists isn't out of the question. Most of the flaws you see on AI artwork are either from using obsolete models (the first round of SD models can't generate hands, but the new ones can), because the prompter is using incorrect settings, or the prompter is not generating enough first pass images or not following up with an Image to Image refinement step. AI art is notably more complex than just keying in a few words and the cloud services which let you do that are probably cheating.

AI artwork is also definitely not infringing on the artwork it was trained on. I posted earlier about an experiment I ran trying to recreate an image I had previously generated. Same computer, same model, same prompt, same settings, same random seed. It did not generate the same image repeatedly.

In other words, AI art is going to absolutely dominate illustration and most artists will probably transition from illustration to animation. Even if it isn't legal, artists will start passing off AI artwork as their own.

As of right now, the Copyright Office has said that they are not going to enforce copyright claims for AI art. In other words, even if you don't think AI art trained on real artworks can legally create commercial artwork, it's going to be hard to argue you can't use real artworks to train a private model, and then use the outputs from the private model to create a public model.

The bottom line is that AI art is absolutely going to change art. While I would recommend waiting and seeing, there is something to be said about guerilla marketing by intentionally stirring up a fight.

As a kid, I couldn't color in the lines. As an adult, I realize it's not because I lack the ability, it's because I don't care. I can't draw to save my life, and I'm completely disinterested. I do have friends who are artists, either as a hobby or professionally. I'm aware how time-consuming it is to make a quality piece.

Recently I've kicked around the prospect of commissioning a piece, but there are several challenges to that. I have to find an artist who's style I like, and then one that is accepting commissions. Next, I have to adequately describe the piece I want in a way the artist understands and can create. None of the artists I've found are cheap, which is understandable because they put in a lot of hours. The more I spend, the more demanding I'm going to be about getting exactly what I want, which gets back to the challenge of communicating what I want.

One of my players set up some AI programs on her computer to generate images of her characters. She spent about a week or two trying to generate the one character she's been playing the longest. Nothing came out exactly right, but in the mass of images generated, she would find things she liked - the face, the hair, the figure, the skin complexion, a piece of jewelry, an article of clothing, or the background scenery.

The AI was giving her concept art. Had she been working with a real human, this would have been prohibitively expensive. That's the main reason why I've never tried to commission anything. The first step of, "What do you want?" is too costly in terms of the artist's time. What's more, every artist knows damned well they need to make the concept phase of the process less expensive and time-consuming.

Quote from: Chris24601 on May 03, 2023, 06:55:02 AM
Until it's decided in court, the legality of AI art is going to be a potential risk, particularly for those creators working on a shoestring budget.

Let's say a year from now a court decides AI art is copyright infringement and your product is loaded down with AI art. Do you have backup art ready to replace it in future sales (as a small timer I am presuming print on demand so at least you wouldn't have to destroy inventory)? Do you just have blank spaces now?

Until it's settled in court, using AI art commercially is something only outfits who could already afford real art (and are just trying to maximize profit) could afford to use.

Use it for images in home games? Sure.

Use it a freeware product you're just dumping on the internet? Tons of fan projects for established properties use copyrighted art and mostly get away with it because they aren't profiting off it and the IP holder views it as essentially free publicity.

But for something you hope to sell? Stick with Creative Commons or commission your own work.

Even if AI art does get the thumbs up from the courts, consider using real art (CC or commissioned) anyway just because AI art will be a dime-a-dozen. I'm sure an IKEA bookshelf is fully functional, but people still pay more for handcrafted hardwood bookshelves... specifically because it's handmade.

You can't stop human sexuality.  Either fortunately or unfortunately, sexual urges eventually triumph over pretty much every safeguard of civilization.  10 years from now, most of us will be living in pods, the machines creating A.I. virtual reality porn of anything imaginable that we can escape into for hours each day. 

Quote from: Fheredin on May 03, 2023, 08:20:16 AM
In other words, AI art is going to absolutely dominate illustration and most artists will probably transition from illustration to animation.

It seems to me that if AI can get to dominate illustration, animation would be the next step.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on May 03, 2023, 09:09:41 AMIt seems to me that if AI can get to dominate illustration, animation would be the next step.

Google is already shown some early animation tests... this is 100% coming. People can go on how it looks bad... at the moment.. but this tech is going to be like the internet or the mobile phone or w/e. There will be a time when our kids or grandkids will not even be able to understand the world when it was not around.

Quote from: Hixanthrope on May 03, 2023, 03:21:42 AM
If you are opposed to it, do you understand how it works?

Being condescending on this forum isn't going to make you friends.