AI is upon us, and although nobody cares if you write code with AI, everyone cares if you're creating art with AI.
If you think I want to find an excuse not to hire real people, think again. I'm here to play sci-fi author.
What I want to suggest are ways of empowering artists with AI, not replacing them.
Of course, Steam still thinks that people who use Midjourney or some musical equivalent are the same as developers using AI to code. Funny, given the fact that more and more developers use AI in coding. If only I could ask Valve's developers:
DON'T YOU GUYS HAVE PHONES AI WHILE CODING?
But never mind, this too shall pass. Let's think about what's next.
AI for making shaders
Shaders are written mostly in the GLSL language, which is old as shit. Which means there has to be a lot of learning materials for generative AI to learn from, right?
That, or a shit load of already-made shaders and shared by websites like Godot-Shaders, for example.
But if you need to adjust them, you can always use an AI. No need to learn another language, right? 😉
AI-generated textures
This is not something I investigated, but who knows, not using AI art is one thing. But what about textures? How much of making textures can we delegate to an AI?
We might as well dabble with it later, right?
Which led me to a new thought: can we use AI to draft anything? Sometimes it's hard to start. What if AI gave us up to speed and made the first draft (like a first draft of a texture), which we will play with to make it more and more how we want to have it.
AI-sound design to spare the vegetables!
Every time you need an exploding head, a cabbage dies!
PLEASE, THINK OF THE CABBAGES!
Of course, games do not need realistic sound effects. It's all smoke and mirrors, am I right, Mr Cabbage Man?
But when you're not making realistic sound effects... can you use AI? Or is it a site that gives you those, too?
Character design with AI post processing
There's an old saying in Poland:
If you copy from one source, it's plagiarism
If you copy from multiple sources, it's a Master's Thesis.
Of course, AI already steals from many artists.
But if we decide to do a photo-realistic photo, who are we stealing from?
If we use a site like That person does not exist, whose likeness are we stealing?
And if we do that, and then remove the AI "glare" we decide to use a filter that turns everything into pixel art? Will that still be stealing?
So... Is using multiple AIs a Master's Thesis? Or just organized crime against art?
Or maybe you have additional ideas of AI use that has a chance of not being too stealy…?