Well, I’ve unfortunately decided to stick with AI art for my NPCs and just make my own edits. After a bit of consideration, the artist I was originally going to go for I don’t think will quite fit the style I’m wanting, and the style I’m wanting purchased from other artists will cost a fortune, given I’ll need a lot of images for each npc, the cost is not realistic. Not only that, most of the artists I found are using AI tools for their art anyways (they admit this in their listing descriptions), so at the end of the day, if I’m trying to move away from AI art and support fellow artists, if the majority of them are using AI themselves and generating things and doing their own edits, what difference does it make if I do the same thing? I searched for artists on DeviantArt and it’s pretty well taken over by AI art now. Same with Etsy. It’s really unfortunate, but it kind of seems like a lot of the artist community is starting to embrace and work with AI. I don’t necessarily see this as a bad thing, especially if someone has their own AI program and trained the program using art styles they actually created. It could save a lot of time and allow artists to focus on editing the finer details. The only thing that makes me sad about the AI art I’m generating is that I really have no idea what it was trained on. Though, I have tried to make my own edits in Photoshop, so there are a few hours of actual effort on my part to create what I’m envisioning. It really does make me sad though, that this is largely the reality we’re facing with art now, and I know there are so many people who are struggling because of it, but, I am noticing that the ones who are embracing AI tools are having success so, maybe the future is just navigating how to utilize these tools in an ethical way that allows it to be more affordable to the average person.
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In addition to making my own edits, I’m also going to try and make a lot of the background art my own but utilizing my photography skills, and perhaps working with AI tools to put filters over the images to make them look like an illustrated background. This, I feel would be a perfectly ethical use of AI, since it is my own art being enhanced by AI to achieve my desired result.
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Anyhow, I’m just on my own journey here and trying to navigate what’s ethical as I go. I don’t really see AI as being black and white, being ultimately evil/good. I think what determines whether it’s good or not is how we make use of it, and ultimately, I do want to use it in more ethical ways so that is what I will be working towards going forward.
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The images below are going to be the Library’s AI NPC, his name is Cyrus. I’m still working out the kinks, trying to use Javascript to connect images to the bot but I will figure it out one of these days. So when that happens, he will be a fully immersive, interactive NPC and display various emotions via these images depending on his dialogues. Very similar to a visual novel! [bpfb_images]
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