The image above was generated with Night Cafe. I know the irony of it, it's not lost on me. All other images are screenshots from Gods Unchained or sourced.
AI Artwork: Pros and Cons
Greetings everyone and welcome to another Gods Unchained post. Today we are going to be talking about the increasingly and increasingly rampant use of AI artwork in GU and what it means for the future, if anything. Despite the stigma associated with AI artwork there are a few pros, so let's break it down before we dig in on the cons.
The pros: You save money and can expedite rollouts. These are honestly the only pros of AI generative artwork. This is NOT using "AI as a tool" but using it to do THE WHOLE magilla. When AI is used on the WHOLE artwork and not just to tweak it, it typically ends up at a severely lower quality than hiring an actual artist. And not always looking as the designers intend it to.
The cons:It's worse quality. I know some will say "no it's not it's the future", but I am not in that camp. An artist who has trained his craft for years does a better job than an AI getting spoon fed a few prompts to generate something and pray it's what you want. This is honestly a pretty big con. My personal issue with GU's most recent wave of AI art is that it isn't even attempting to be spit out and tweaked with multiple prompts or style choices.
I know it's AI, but it can be better
The last few sets have had AI art, but this recent batch is pretty damn lazy. I hate to say it. It looks as if they just popped one prompt into the AI and went with the first generation. "Muscular large amazon" etc. Previous sets like tower of dread feel as though some thought went into the generations and they may have even used a few prompts to reach the final product (not as good as a real artist but still much better than this recent wave).
Above is an AI artwork from Tower of dread, below is a newer wave of AI artwork from the more recent cards. As you can see the quality has greatly diminished and feels a lot lazier.
Where is the budget going?
My real question through all this is "where is this budget they are saving by using basic AI going" it doesn't seem to be going back into the game. So where does it go? I have already ranted about it , but it definitely seems like the game is being reduced to as much of a skeleton crew as possible. I don't like the direction it seems to be headed. At this point I am willing to accept AI will probably drive the game, but are they really going to be so lazy about it as to not use it well? You're already not hiring artists do you have to just crank out the first prompt generated images also? Honestly the audacity is unreal.
Talking Tidbits: Good AI, Bad AI
A lot of folks are going to rush to defend AI, or rush to condemn it, and in truth it SHOULD just be a tool that is used to assist artists in producing faster. Not cut them out of the equation entirely, or if it is at least it should be used to it's best ability. AI doesn't have to be inherently bad, but in this case I can't just go "Yeah this is great look at these 2 second one prompt generated images woohoo". I'm a bit miffed, it's honestly kindof sad after having played this game since the earliest sets like genesis. But maybe it will get better? Probably just cope, but hey it is what it is.
Thanks for reading this short rant about GU's recent AI artwork shenanigans. I'm not a happy camper but it is what it is. You all rock and thanks for the continued support