A concerning trend.
CHAPTERS-
00:00 Introduction (Divorced Dads)
1:08 Ai Magic Ad
2:17 Champions TCG
4:01 Ward TCG
6:09 Explaining the Metazoo Video
8:25 Return to Divorced Dads
10:07 Closing Statements
My Website: www.questinomicon.com/
Wanna see me talk video games?: / supersshs
Need Business? Or just have question? email me at whalegunstudios@gmail.com
If you disagree with me on AI generated art, that's fine. I make it very clear in this video that this is my opinion. However, don't be disingenuous about the way that people feel about it and the way that it affects artists.
Take your own advice.
@@jadedoak6255 take sleeping pills and malt liquor
Most commercial "artists" are paid to imitiate other peoples art style for close to mininum wages. Treating art like a product is what led to AI art. Unfortunately commercial artists want to say art isn't a product yet want to sell it like one. Non-commercial artists are not affected by AI so people will never stop creating art.
@@radradder Yes, "house styles" kill any positive impact of artists and result in "illustrations" rather than art. MTG for example went from a variety of unique artists (like Rebecca Guay, etc) to a much more homogenous house style. For products like this, it seems like it'd be best off for them to train an AI bot on their own art and use that to procedural generate. My main problem with AI art is training it on artists' work without their consent, but if they're just going to pump out 300+ cards with their own house style, why not cut out the middleman.
Why do all of the AI bros in the comments have naming schemes like [word][word][4 numbers] edit: nevermind it's just a lot of names in general. is that a default google username thing nowadays?
Why didn't divorced dads just use stock photos? That's what sold us in the first place, images of real things in the real world. Was it not possible to obtain real life photos that were able to be resold? I doubt it...
Exactly, I would buy five starter sets and half a dozen booster boxes if it was still stock art.
Licensing issues probably.
incredible work. i've been pressured to check out divorced dads for weeks and had the exact same initial reaction as you - "wow, wish this wasn't... using these."
it really bummed me out. esp since he's clearly paid people to do art stuff for him before ykno
@@ToxyTCG sadly it feels like more and more card games are using ai, i see a new tcg getting announced only to see crappy ai images. Even older games are staring to use it, namely Magic and legends of runeterra for marketing. When it finally comes to yugioh i will probably jump ship, but to where? without an online simulator its practically impossible to play cardgames in germany and new cardgames to replace the old ones just dont seem to be working.
@@lonewolf646huh can you link me where lor use ai art
Ai art popping up in general has been making me better at clocking whether or not art is ai and I'm disappointed that I'm even subconsciously honing that skill let alone actually following up on a hunch and looking up if it is like with Divorced Dads.
Anything AI art generates is inherently the lowest common denominator, the most generic interpretation possible of the prompts it was given. That's not a flaw in the technology to be ironed out in future iterations, that *is* the technology. It can't come up with anything unique or creative because that's not what it's supposed to do, it's putting pixels together based on probability.
Is why is not art. Is its own thing.
Yeah, i think that the AI ruins the Divorced Dad cards...
i thinkthats more than fair
The old images were significantly better and much funnier. I have zero interest in a game that looks like knock off mtg with dad jokes and bad art
I think it’s a lame joke to begin with and was ruined from the start.
I would’ve preferred stock images tbh
@@gerharddamm5933 Me too
Ai images feel like taking a famous author's phone and writing a book with their keyboard's autocomplete function
that's great, I am using that lol
Really nice to see this video pop up, I very loosely followed divorced dads because it made me laugh. I remember there was a new one that popped up, saw the new "art" and just went awww man. Bummer
Paying someone to type prompts into an image generator for you is hilarious. I can't believe that people actually do that.
Is like paying someone to push buttons.
The best solution I can think of when it comes to AI work at least for anyone asking for a commission or or to simply get a gotcha from said "artists" is to show proof that they have worked on it with saving their work as a PSD files. With PSD files you are able to see all the layers, sketches and any other valuable information that you cannot obtain thru AI generation. I think PSD file investigating should be a company standard. I recommend anyone who reads this who is planning on commissioning someone, ask them first if they can work on their commission in a PSD file.
There's the problem of ownership though. Typically when you commission work, you only own the final pieces that the artist submits to you. Any WIP sketches etc don't belong to you, and providing a PSD makes it a lot more likely that someone will make unlicensed changes to the work so they don't have to "bother" the artist with changes.
the issue is that drawing programs like krita usually can´t handle to many layers in one project without massive slowdown. you cud go back and add older layers back in to it at the end. But ai bros can just use tags to generate images that look like unfinished sketches of the final image and add them together
Another problem with this is that all artists are not that great at keeping a psd file neat and tidy. I have worked with very talended illustrators who can't keep themselves to flatten their images multiple time through the process of making their piece.
or ask for work in progress proofs. Sketches are gonna look like the finished project, PSDs are gonna have work layers. generative AI does not generate sketch versions of an original image well.
i kinda like that Sorcery TCG just outright bans digital art. They require their artists to paint traditionally, which makes each artwork really distinct and less homogenous, which is what i think magic art became eventually. Everything looks the same in mtg and might aswell have been drawn by the same person.
that's interesting!
I think that has less to do with the switch to digital alone and more to do with the direction the art director took the game. I'd really connect the homogenizing of art with the whole introduction of the gatewatch and the desire to make the cards tell their story. There were good and bad reasons to make everything similar but I agree I miss my abstract weirdo shit and random modern art like on stasis.
Hey, Machine Learning researcher here, great video! I absolutely agree on basically all your points in the video: I'm really not a fan of using generative AI - derived art as a substitute for real art, because it's only ever used due to it being a cost-cutting measure. It's never because it makes the end-product better, but because it's cheaper and easier. I have no problem with people using it as a tool or even whole-sale for fan projects as it is a way to really democratise the creative process. With regards to how you say it steals other peoples artwork from the internet (3:05 -> 3:30 ish) and "mish-mashes" it together, and how it is incapable of generating new images, this is not how it works. To try put the model into layman's terms, I will have to heavily oversimplify, but I hope this somewhat elucidates how it works. The AI image generation model is effectively just doing its best to try to predict an output of pixels that would maximise the probability its output would match a given input text description. It does this with many, many examples of images and captions, and does its best to build an internal model of how things looks, and maps related things together in it's latent space, which you can think of as a kind of understanding of the world. These caption - image pairs were drawn from anywhere researchers could get them in the past, as often these models are very data hungry. This includes places like Deviantart who permitted such uses. It learns in much the same way we do, and can be influenced by what it sees. It copies styles just in the way we would study famous artists and copy their styles. Due to these models still honestly being in their infancy, they're fairly flawed for the most part, and haven't reached the same understanding of the world as people have, so are prone to making mistakes humans would never make, and this is part of the reason we sometimes notice when art is AI generated. Despite must of the art used to train many of these models being freely available on the internet, much of it has non-commercial terms of use, and it's very much a grey-area if using these as training points for a generative AI model constitutes commercial use of the work as the work itself will never be produced by the model or sold as part of the product. I'm not sure where I stand on this issue as its very much profiteering off of free work, yet at the same time, it's only the same way we humans would adapt our artistic and creative talents. Just to think, before Filippo Brunelleschi, our art didn't even use perspective, and only as a whole culture did our art improve from effectively stealing from his art style. I think progress will be progress, and it's hard to put the breaks on it, but companies and people must be sensible with the tools they are given, because that's all generative AI is at the moment: a tool. And you know what they say, "To a man with a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail".
I like your comment but unfortunately if it you cant put your entire point on a picket sign, you cant change a hateful mind.
yeah, the plagiarism machine is slightly more advanced than simply saying "it steals art and mashes it together" even if that's a functionally accurate representation of a complicated computer program. I don't have to know how an internal combustion engine works to describe a car as something that converts a limited fuel into forward motion and exhaust
@@Crushanator1 you can also explain a gun as "a thing that converts limited fuel into forward motion and exhaust" Oversimplification leads to mixing of really different things.
I think another issue we'll see is that describing AI in general and particular models in specific will have an ever increasing level of difference. Cheapass people are using cheapass AI and cheap AI models are gonna have less data and training done to make them function. The end result will be a lot more straight up collage and a lot less nuance. Curious though what your reaction is to the fact that a lot of public models can be prompted to spit out versions of their input images mostly unmodified and how that interacts with the idea of them "creating something new".
Hey, great video! Shared and subbed!
I’ve seen at least 3 other ai art tcgs beyond the ones you mentioned in this video, they’re a dime a dozen and I feel bad for anyone duped into buying into the hype
The strangest part of the use of ai is that divorced dads has an animated series so why didn't they just use that artstyle?????
see thats what im sayin
or just use stills from their animated series like the star wars tcg did with star wars
@@mopanda81 yeah
5:48 I don't think its a fair to assume that someone using AI art would also be taking shortcuts with other aspects of their game. Especially because art isn't really necessarily something simple, and actually the only part you CAN shortcut your way around without significant negative impact on the quality of the game. It's the least important aspect for evaluating the potential quality of a tcg. You can have a good tcg with bad art or even no art, if the rules and balance are well thought out, but the most beautiful original art can't make a good game on their own. Especially when looking at small scale projects, by individuals or small groups, someone who is very invested into game design aspects but not at all competent at creating art, could spend years playtesting and perfecting the balance of their tcg, and then use ai art to simply have art. I'd argue they made the right decision in how to allocate their time. On the other hand, an artist hand drawing unique art over the same time frame, will have a nice collection of artwork, but they don't actually have a game, and if they just throw something together in an afternoon, it's unlikely to be good. There's a reason that the art is often the last thing done. If you look at the cards used for prototyping in the early development of mtg, they're basically just bits of cardboard with a stick figure and some text on it. TL;DR: Art is the packaging. The mechanics are the product. Sure, appealing packaging makes a product more enticing, but bland packaging could be just as indicative of more work being put into the actual product
I understand this way of seeing it. I'm just speaking on my feelings based on experiences I've had and things I've seen.
@ToxyTCG Fair. Just felt it was important to point out. There is a lot of valid criticism regarding AI art, and the ethics of it, unfortunately a lot of the discourse around it tends to be very black/white which is unhealthy. You actually did a good job of having a critical take, without falling into the pit of simply bashing AI uncritically. And I think it's good that you mentioned that AI art isn't necessarily indicative of overall poor quality, but I feel it's a bit of a missed opportunity to include some more nuance on the topic. Mind you, you overall did a good job with your video, I just personally noticed that one bit, and wanted to comment on it. I don't known why this video was in my KZhead recommendations, and haven't watched any of your other videos, but I think there's a lot of promise going by this one. Just wanted to leave some feedback, and where I was coming from in a bit more depth, since you took the time to respond to my comment.
Using AI images already tells me they're lazy and/or cheap. I have 0 reason believe the rest is not treated the same way.
@@AlexW1495I am very passionate about TCG I am making, and I am really trying my best to make the mechanics interesting and balanced. However I do not have money to pay for an artist, nor I posess the skill and talent to draw something appealing.
I feel like AI art, like all tools, is good or bad depending entirely on how it's used. If I wanted to make a TCG, for instance, AI art would be solid way to get playtests in or even produce cards if I don't have much of a budget. If I try to sell the game on 'genuine art', however, then I think that would be wrong.
Why that is so complicated to get, is beyond me.
people have been playtesting cards with words or sketches or just no art at all for a long time, art is ultimately something you use to please consumers not really necessary for a playtest
@@mopanda81 As someone who has been in play tests, there is often that one guy that insist on the game needing some art.
I wound't be making a TCG if it weren't for AI, it's a tremendous help in many different ways. There's good/bad AI art, but it's a tool that will give you what you put into it, and having foundational art knowledge is helpful. I also believe that creators need to be upfront about using it, but I think at the end of the day the outrage is a little overblown.
I would rather the cards have stick figures or even be absent of art entirely rather than play something that uses AI art. Generative images are just soul-less wastes of visual real estate that provide no function and barely any form.
@@xchronox0 well I definitely disagree with your perspective, I've seen plenty of AI art that has more "soul" than a lot of human made art.
@@jamessderby What kind of human made art? Reproduction of icons? Graffiti?
@@alfredosaint-jean9660 any kind of visual art
I understand using AI art perhaps to visualize things or prototype, since most times, prototyping uses placeholder art anyway. Not for finished products, though. Ethical and moral issues aside, it’s just bland and boring and you can’t even replicate the results. It seems like a bad value proposition all around.
I really only see AI Art for card games (or any medium really) useful for 'personal non-commercial use' like I do for just fun. I can't imagine there are people selling TCG's using AI Art for the cards making profit off of it. Seems like a slippery slope to sell your products with AI Art when the laws on it can change the future and possibly get retroactively sued/made to pay fines. As for the point on photoshop got bad news for you, Adobe has Ai Generators in Photoshop now to make Ai Art and its already swirling with controversy. This monster will not go away until it gets out of control and laws are in place to either reign it in or allow it to stay around in some form commercially. With that said, the AI tools like Stable Diffusion are really useful for my own art, such as taking a photo of mine of a texture and being able to easily make it tile so I can use it on a 3d model. You can also use the tool to train just your own art to generate in the same style.
This is gonna be a heated take but I think AI Art should be used in TCGs however only for Bulk cards. Bulk cards aren't much cared for anyway, honestly that's a waste of time for a lot of artists and makes it cheaper to do. I'll admit this would be a impact on those of smaller artists who like doing bulk but emotion withdrawn it works. Maybe it should be only a rule for a smaller company, a smaller TCG. MTG can easily afford to pay real artists for Bulk but ya know when these smaller TCG try to start up I think this would be a great idea. Make all commons in a start up TCG just be AI art while the rest is commissioned then hopefully when success happens get real artists in for the commons. It also would make people appreciate the difference even more. Just like yourself I would never want a world that's just every TCG is now AI art so this could be a good in-between idea. I do think in reality terms though it's always up to ppl's wallets if people boycott one for AI art and just don't buy into it that TCG will die very fast, though if the TCG is done really well and ppl think it's too cool anyway then it will success. Which actually might be a good argument that companies couldn't just get away with a cheap lazy job even if AI was used as ppl would just not buy it. And it would actually take a lot more effort to get ppl to buy into a AI TCG as it would need way more convincing reasons to like it so you could overlook that fact.
Tbh, divorced Dad's is a TCG I wouldn't care about using AI. It's a meme game 😂 magic, I get being mad about. Corporations with money have no excuses to use AI. I do feel like period anyone (including me) need to label all AI work as such. If it's a small group of people doing something who probably don't have artists it's not a big deal. If they get big then they could go back and get real artists.
I generally agree and all the examples people bring up are really sad. We don't want to force an environment where artists are pressured into using shady digital tools that are incorporated into software more and more which is bad enough on its own. I do not like where we're heading myself but Algomancy remains the project where I think it makes sense and isn't that shady. The dev puts immense effort into the playdesign and it just makes sense for him to use the skills he has to incorporate into a really strong 1 man project.
I love Graeme Barrett, he's got some of the funniest stuff on the internet. But between the ai art and the exorbitant shipping costs, I was turned off of buying DD
Ai art kind of adds an aura of "cheapness" to any product, for lack of a better term. I understand not having to pay artists makes forming a startup card game less expensive, but I'd rather these aspiring game creators used something like Kickstarter instead and then just released their product with a higher standard of quality. I agree a lot of these new games are giving Metazoo vibes, where the entire game turns out to be a rug pull to generate profit instead of a passion project.
tbf card games has been a market ripe for rug pulls forever it just used to be the barrier to entry was a bit higher before kickstarter internet printing ai art and the current new boom in card games.
Hello, Mark Evans doesn't seem to use generative AI though.
www.ward-cardgame.com/card-library here is a link to he card library. All of the cards I see on here have ai generated art
I'm sorry there's so many AI NPCs in your comments man, the points you bring up in this video are genuinely interesting and considered, and I think they went straight over the heads of a lot of people here.
Besides the rarity, art is what gives value too the cards. But unlike my friends i just buy the cards i need/want off places like cardmarket. I've never ones checked who made the art on the card or purchased card for that reason. I do however like playing themed decks. So it is much more important for me what the developers had in mind with certain cards. Or what the lore of the card is or what the art of the card was supposed too mean in the universe of the TCG etc. So although i understand that AI art is still using existing art too build off from. So can real artists take a pose from one character with the hairstyle of another with the clothes of another with the other parts too make a completely new character just the same.
I completely understand yoir viewpoint. Card art has a varying degree lf importance to different people
Couldnt care less about TCGs but I like the way you express your thoughts. Subbed.
Great video, def subbed. Companies are going to use AI art as soon as they save more money from it than they lose from reputation damage, that's not just for card games. I think it's unfortunate, I do care and want the human made art, but that's just my principle and not everyone's gonna share it. It's inefficient, slow and expensive, but it lets people live a life they want to live. That is an alien but heavenly concept to me :) Ai art is absolutely great for prototyping, you can make shitload of pretty images in a single evening. For playtesting my homebrew tcg I always stole images from anime, printed it and tested with friends. That is if I even placed the art on cards lul... For online playtesting, if you go public you can't do the same and I'm okay with ai art on that front. I yearn to be able to use real art once I'm sure I can commit to the project. I wouldn't call it epidemic, but if you didn't this video probably wouldn't be recommended by youtube algorithm. I'm afraid it's inevitable evolution PS: many other arts are in the same situation and have been for a while now. I'm especially concerned about voice actors
These games are so low budget and rate, they probably couldn't even exists if it wasn't for AI. As for Magic, Im more concerned about the decay of its actual art.
My dude you bought the stuff without even checking them, its not their fault, the problem is not the ai is the consumers
I state very clearly that it's my fault in the video.
This is pretty silly. As a game designer, I'm not an artist. I'm the guy who creates the systems for how and when you roll your dice. The hex-crawls, dungeons, bestiary, lore, and campaign(s). Because the task of art generation is so nebulous for me at this time, I pivoted into a "rules-lite" TTRPG from an ECG. Hiring an artist for an ECG or TCG would be so insanely expensive that I would not feasibly get my stupid idea into reality. For example, we'll say artists charge $100 commission per piece. I need over 100 images just to get the thing "functional", let alone "market-ready". I do not have a down-payment for a house, to blow on a prototype/passion project. AI-generated art at least lets me attempt to make universally comprehensible/enjoyable artworks to supplement the game system(s). Let alone, think of how much time it would take to do that many images. Even if he was cranking one out every 3 days, that's only like 120 images a year if you're lucky. I'd just say, w/margin of error 100 images a year. That's YEARS I'd be paying some artist and still unable to release a product. I wholeheartedly agree though, if I had money I would hire artists. But that means at least like 3 artists on a ~$30k annual salary. For me? Random guy trying to make really cool homebrew games, props, and trinkets for friends/family? Yeah, sorry AI just works for me. I understand the topic of TCGs in particular is finnicky regarding AI art in the manner that... While the cards ARE game pieces, and the mechanics "matter" more... 90% of the reason people are attracted to cards are the images. If your art looks bad, it's almost impossible to not assume your game is also bad. Books and their covers, right? Big companies are going to use AI because it's cheaper, easier, faster. You'll just have to boycott. I mean, I only buy MtG second-hand anyway to maintain a pet-deck of mine from decades ago. We're literally watching another TCG craze, I have no idea how MetaZoo became popular besides Alpha Investments possibly laughing because it's going to become a "meme" item. Lo and behold, look at it now. It always looked really ugly and clunky to me personally so I never touched it. (Almost bought a few starters from Walmart though) Divorced Dads is just a meme product and a good one at that (I compare it to something like a joke version of EPIC card game). These new "TCG" products are the knock-offs and hidden gems because the interest in the market is clearly "large" enough to support various floundering TCGs as it used to in the 90's and 00's. Remember Warcraft and Naruto TCGs? Inuyasha? Yu-yu Hakusho? Medabots, etc. It goes on and on forever. More "bloat" isn't the bad part, it's the big corpos axing artists. But hey, maybe that means successful indie games will be able to hire real artists a few years down the line? If you use generative AI without photoshop, you're not even making art. The AI isn't good enough to give you the images you want without SOME photoshop skill. Not even joking. Scroll through AI art twitter and zoom in on the images, you can see who does photoshop on their images and who doesn't. That's the key separation between a "good faith" product and a "bad faith" one. The issue with AI is that "it all looks the same" which means there's a few really popular styles that are intrinsically linked to being "AI". If you generate something actually unique people will be suspicious because the art style looks familiar/uncanny valley but still able to enjoy the artwork, generally. I don't think AI is a bad thing, I think it's the 3D printer of artwork- But of course, it's a new technology so corporations use it as justification to maximize profits... For themselves. Fun video, glad KZhead recommended this to me.
My issue with ai generation stems from two things. The first is the way it scrapes art and the second is the way that people have been paying others an insane amount to generate ai. There are other options to getting quick and easy art. If you're really adamant to not draw and not attempt to hone your art skills, there are artists out there who specifically make royalty free art for people to use. I talked in a recent video about an indie game that uses these free services to get the art for their cards.
Yeah, paying for AI art is silly.
Also, Romancer, do you have a link to a demo or a page for your tabletop game?
@@ToxyTCG I understand that issue, but that's not the consumer's fault in any way unless you wanna petition for boycotts. Technological advancement = shifting paradigm. Just like when cell phones and the internet first started. Royalty free art is just as bad as AI art in terms of making your game "stand out", if not worse. Nothing makes people walk away faster than the same stock image being sold as original. Kinda like how tons of popular KZhead videos have Kevin MacLeod music- Because something is better than nothing. But something original will be appreciated more. For my current junction (building the playable prototype); AI is literally the best answer for me. Because I'm not delaying the game for years to learn to attempt to draw the things I want; I get to put that time into playtesting and re-writing/adjustments while the computer batches my conceptual images. AI allows me to be a one-man team, so it will be a slow dev process. But cheap, and I won't have to spend money until I start the marketing campaign(s) for expos/cons and Kickstarter. That however requires the assumption that people even enjoy playing it though. No success is guaranteed without both a product AND an audience.
I really have no issue with technological advancements, but i personally believe the way in which ai scrapes art is unethical. I disagree about royalty free art being just as bad. An artist put that art out there so people have access to it. If you have an issue with worrying about what people might see, opening photoshop and changing certain elements can be a simple process. I don:t much care for or think about originality. Originality doesnt exist, and for whatever reason a lot of people keep bringing that up as a talking point
Where I see this heading, and there will need to be guidelines on.the degree, is that anything that uses AI generated graphics (humans create art, not AI) ends up in the public domain. If a publisher relies on it, then people can pirate the game, and it end up in the public domain. I see that the battleground will shift to here. Rights to IP need to get tied to artists, not businesses.
Regardless of their return policy, you should be able to call your bank and do a chargeback for all money that you spent on a vendor who was selling you AI generated images without informing you that they are AI generated. The chargeback process can take a long time, so make sure you talk to their billing dispute department and NOT their fraud department. Banks have a very narrow definition of fraud, meaning that you should ONLY talk to the fraud department if your credit card was used without your consent, not if you purchased something and it turned out to be fake or AI generated or whatever. Different banks may work differently but that's just my 2 cents to save you about a month on the phone. I'm not a banker. talk to a banker for more details on how to do a chargeback.
i /have/ worked at a bank before so i'm fairly familiar with their rules and regulations. This is an idea I hadnt thought of. However, I am getting the product that I paid for, I was just unaware of the situation until I scoured different pages of the webstie. Nothing was falsely advertised necessarily, I just didnt do due diligence
@@ToxyTCG I understand where you are coming from, you didn't double check, so you may not feel that you deserve your money back, but to be fair to actual artists who study and work for decades to create the artwork that AI scrapes as training data without the artists' knowledge or consent, you should request a chargeback on any purchase for any product that uses AI generated images. It's the right thing to do.
@@magusofthebargain I getcha I do agree that its a messed up situation and thats the ntire reason im upset in the first place.
@@ToxyTCG do the chargeback, and if they want their product back they can send you a self addressed box with a prepaid shipping label.
We should stop using the marketing term "AI Art" and start calling it "AI Collage" the fact that you can prompt some of these models to just spit out their input images raw should really indicate the level to which the inputs are being recycled more than manipulated into something new.
Ai art lacks soul.
thats why it is popular. most humans lack a soul too.
Wow, bunch of pro-Ai people in the comments. That's sad to see. Everone who is reading this; An Ai model that was trained on images, that an artists didn't consent too, is exploitation of those artists works. Even if there is no law explicitly stating it, we can still call it exploitation. Thanks for the video.
you don't need consent to learn from another's work
@@jamessderbyMachines don't really learn. Not in the way that humans do. They copy information into a database. Then they calculate a statistical mixture out of that. But the information that they copied from the artist is still there, in their database, being exploited whenever needed. You know how machines can reproduce a perfect copy of a image every single time? Humans can't do that. Ever. So there's no point in comparing human freedom to machine regulation.
@@brenorocha6687 yeah, it's a poor argument that shows how little the pro-ai crowd knows about this topic. ai isn't really ai, it's just a program like any other that just happens to be called that. it doesn't actually think or create anything new. that's why there will be no skynet. it literally cannot do anything by itself.
@@jamessderby you need consent to put an artist's piece of work into the database used by the ai. what people are doing is piracy, plain and simple. there's no discussion.
@@brenorocha6687 none of the original data is stored in the models, that is incorrect. yes obviously machines don't learn like humans do, but it's still a form of learning and to say otherwise is just semantics.
I respect your opinion but your understanding of "AI art" isnt correct and sounds like the misinformed hate videos made against AI art and i mean specifically your point about referencing and copying art that already exists, its just not how most AI works and there are multiple methods of generation. I hope you find peace and happiness but going against AI art is like going against the calculator or digital music processing. I appreciate that you do not like bad AI art, but your admitted prejudice is just part of what you think is acceptable or moral. Imagine if your entire life was judged at a glance by the way you look and how much care and money you put into your appearance. I love all the tools available to me by enhancing my own art with AI tools, and i hope you learn to accept them as well, because its not going away.
AI art is basically stock photos but more controversial. If you're using it in internal presentations, or to get across an image that you don't have the words for, fine. But if it's not worth an artist's time to make a good matching version, it's not worth my time to consume your garbage product. Yes, art is expensive, but so is every other aspect of making a decent product. If you can't be bothered to hire an artist, you probably also couldn't be bothered to hire a game designer, let alone play testers.
Let's cool it with the Anti-pixabay remarks
What if you are a developer and have 90% of the required skills? There are lots of people who can code and enjoy it but don't enjoy drawing or have those skills. Your ideology gatekeeps normal ppl from trying to make something cool and props up the large corporations that can afford to pay for all these things. More competition will lead to better working conditions.
@@jordanmeyler9239 Everyone can draw. If you have a good game, putting your own or another artist's assets into it will give it your personality and it will make it more of a part of you. Using machine noise is just you hiding the talent you have, trying to appeal to some imagined standard for art that frankly doesn't exist, as we see again and again how shitty video games can look while still being a major success. At the end of the day, even just using words rather than graphics is a better aproach than to let a neural network ruin your creation process.
The classic "You must be at least this rich in order to enterprise". That is not even about AI, is just a bad way of gatekeeping.
@@alfredosaint-jean9660 "Why does the government make me pay for ecological disposal of my toxic waste instead of just letting me pump it into the ocean? Classic gatekeeping DC, always going against the little guy."
I have thought that the art for the last few sets has been noticeably bad. Super busy, tacky, just off somehow. I want to emphasize that I did not come to the conclusion that I didn't like the art based on the concept that artists might be using AI, I was truly and genuinely upset by the art before making the connection. Oh one other thing, for this most recent set- Notice how, literally, 9 out of every 10 humanoids is wearing a cowboy hat??? Like, I'm not making that up! How the FUCK did that fly under the radar? It is soooo tack
As much as I agree with many of the things you mentioned, I cannot get behind the "anti-AI" crowd due to the INSANE amount of hypocrisy they share. Sure, supporting artists are good. But the thing is, many people define art as solely anything visual. Maybe movies, sure, but images primarily. This also means that other forms of art, like writing, music, even more traditional creations became obscure, undesired and many creators just ignore them, especially back in the past when visual artists/drawers were charging INSANE amount of money, so for anything else people had to stick with budget alternatives, or just... stock materials. For every $500 drawing, you had musicians, writers working for 10-20$ at average so they can even get ANY amount of money for their works. And since social media accustomed people to visualizing and prioritizing that, all other medium have been hurt by that. Before AI art, artists had to listen CONSTANTLY that what they do is "not real art". Even as a musician, there are discussions under certain releases of mine that are solely discussing the artwork, the material, rather than commenting ANYTHING about the music. This is even more prominent on social media, and it tells where priorities lie - sometimes people do not even listen to the music or other form of art people make. Now that the tides have turned, this ironically allowed some of the other resources to be managed better, and if a project gets bigger, so will the options for such project. What it really did is that due to AI being an option for visual art (and being trash for other medium), now things are balanced out. Not just that, but what we only need is ONE precedent of someone suing a big studio over AI copying their art, and they will never ever use it, being this a tool solely for budget projects. In an ideal world, each and every artist would be paid equally and would paid more than well, that's what I believe in. Does it still suck? Absolutely. But I find it super interesting how rather than people talking about the damage it can cause via misinformation in the dark age of cancel culture and fake news, we SOLELY focus on the visual art representation of such aspects. Rather than it resulting in actual paranoia, the only paranoia now people have to experience if an artist is using AI art or not, proof or not... Kind of a bleak future, if you ask me.
This is absolutely understandable and I agree. ESPECIALLY musicians are treated really really shitty, but all forms of art get treated differently with a level of whats "real" and what isnt We treat professionally done stuff as tho it is of a different realm than what's independent, and it's a really shitty way of thinking.
@@ToxyTCG I think what we really are enduring on a higher scale now is that art has been degraded into entertainment, and because of how easy it was to consume visual art (especially drawings), artists had a highest high for a while, but with AI replacing it, they experience a lowest low. That being said, I feel like this is the opportunity for people to restart appreciating art for what it is: a piece of art, emotion, expression, experience, rather than just something we scroll over, smile, and move on. The connection we can build with characters, especially in a TCG should be something cherished, and if we realize that once again, will be the moment when AI art won't be "just enough".
I mean, AI art seems to lower the barrier to entry into any industry where artwork is the major cost despite being subjectively secondary to another factor like writing or gameplay. If you did have tight mechanics for a card game, or a great idea for an RPG supplement or something, with generated art that you can make in a few hours, at home, without having to spend thousands of dollars for decent artwork, you can now get passable, workable art, that at least allows you to get your work out there. If nobody buys it because you use AI art, so be it, their choice, but I’m glad the option is there. Despite being a writer, I feel the same way about Chat GPT and people using it as an editor instead of paying me, it’s probably an inferior service, but hey, it’s hard to beat free.
I can understand this mindset and why people jump to ai art. a big thing is how ai scrapes art. It would be less of an issue to me if all art that was used to assist in the generation was actively given approvable of use by the artist. but to this day I see people talking about how they see people copying their art using ai. I'm not okay with it. Another partof me thinks people that want to make art should take their time to teach themselves how to draw what they want, but that's a different type of argument.
If AI was trained on art that wasn't explicitly just ripped straight from non consenting artists that might be a good point, but even then, the barrier for entry in any creative industry is really only as high as the effort you're willing to put in. If you just go "I'm too lazy to learn how to draw or model, so I'm going to just steal all my images from people who have already done the work and call it mine," what place do you have, as an individual without creative integrity, in an industry where art is an integral part of that industry? The barrier for entry isn't there because some malicious force is holding back the everyman from participating, it's there because participating in a creative industry requires a certain amount of dedication, effort, and skill to participate in it.
I wouldn't pay you either, you write like me and I got a D lmao
@@numnut154 you don't need consent to learn from another's work, during the learning process it's not copying the data and it's not a form of compression. and genAI is not drawing so you shouldn't conflate the two, however both require skill and are legitimate tools for making art.
shitty Art created in just a couple minutes will always be superior to this machine noise
😂 And there it is. The SAME EXACT argument used thirty years ago against digital art.
@@jadedoak6255 This is, objectively speaking, not even an argument I am making. What are you yapping about?
@@hexcodeff6624 the argument you put forth isn't the argument you're making? What are YOU yapping about?
@@jadedoak6255 Now get this: An argument is actually a specific kind of statement with a given structure. A premise and a conclusion that is strung together through a piece of logic. So me saying one thing is better than the other isn't an argument because I am not using either a premise or a conclusion, I am simply stating a fact. By the way, to say an argument is bad because it has been misapplied in the past is in itself a bad argument. Premise 1: Digital and traditional art require almost identical skill sets and training and creating a piece has the same process in both mediums. Premise 2: The machine noise you are defending doesn't ask for any such skills. In fact, it's build to require non at all and still give an equivalent output regardless of if you possess these skills or not. Conclusion: Whether an argument was wrongfully applied against digital art in the past doesn't matter to if they are valid arguments against machine images because a change in medium isn't at all comparable to removing the entire artistic process out of the equation.
Those are not even the same thing.
Nothing burger.
much like me as a persom
@ToxyTCG look into the history of The Luddites. All will be okay. AI art democratizes art in a way that is of more benefit than the negative you are concerned about. Does it suck for some? Sure. But it will be okay. It will be better than okay.
@@claytonyoung1351what about the "art" part of art. Im fine with ai art existing but it will never be art to me cus no one made it, there is no artist.
@EXFrost that's because you don't understand it. As well, all art is taken from what others have seen. There is no art without using other art as reference. AI art is great for accessibility and doesn't stop artists being artists.
@@claytonyoung1351 that will never be true. AI is not inspired by the art it synthesises. Inspiration to AI is purely data. Thats what delegitimises it for me. You can argue whatever but the way artists use reference and AI are not the same. Art is human expression. Thats literally what it is. Full stop.
It's sad that there are people who looks at art and only see product. The point of art is not to fill some area, or how much it cost or how long it took. Art is a conversation. It is there because someone thought about it, the message it had to convey, the intended audience, then thought about how to make it happen using the amount of ability that had been achieved so far. AI generated images are just Frankstein monsters made with parts of art found online. It is impressive a lot of times. But that's it. Only impressive. No feeling, no story, no conversation. It gets dull fast.
I have paid artists to make art. It costs at *least* $100, often more for a single piece of quality art. Now, let's imagine I am a talented game developer and am making a TCG game. I would need at least 300 cards or so to get started right? So, let's see, do I have $30,000 laying around somewhere? Maybe I should check the couch cushions. I understand you don't realize this, but your opinion is just nothing more than gatekeeping. Quality art should only be available to the rich, right?
There are professional artists who release pieces they make for free use Also, an example i giive in the video is someone who admitting to paying a person 90,000$ for generating ai images.
@@ToxyTCG Can those artists make requests for free?
Firstly, saying that generative AI just makes a collage of pre-existing works is just a lie. Secondly, art is a luxury good. I am making an indie card game that I am planning to release for free with every card unlocked. My budget is on the negatives and I cannot afford to give 10k€ for professional art. AI art is like fast food, an easy and cheap alternative to get by when you don't have enough money for a healthy meal.
I would rather see one of the following: - Royalty free art - Stick figures - MS paint drawings - Literally no art Over: - Soulless AI slop
@@xchronox0 Your customer preference.
I understand and can empathize with the mindset of your opinion but largely disagree. 👍
In as free of a market as the TCG market is, the consumer is the decider of what is good art. Ease of creation shouldn't matter. We don't get mad when the original artist uses a computer instead of a paint brush. We don't get mad that Wizards uses a printing press instead of hand creators. AI is just another tool. I do think artists should place their art behind copyright and other systems that don't let AI scrub their art (probably need to update laws and monitoring), but I don't think that AI art is inherently bad.
This video inspired me to make a TCG using AI art. Fun idea!
Good luck making anything good
You won't. You are too lazy and talentless.
I feel like divorced dads is supposed to be such a joke/low effort that they get a pass
Hi, intellectual property should be abolished. Your ideas and everyones ideas benefit more people being spread freely than they do being owned and caged by individuals. A.I. art is a great example. This could help anyone who wants to have art in any art style be able to do so at no cost. Thats why so many people are using it, because its cheaper and easier and if it wasn't for this irrational backlash against it, the art is good enough for the job. I'm not saying its perfect but if someone doesn't know its a.i. art until they're told it is, then it's good enough, and its getting better every day. I dont want to prop up the incomes of small artists whose work has been made largely obsolete, i want everyone to be able to make stuff that looks like what they draw without the cost or effort which is what a.i. does.
I use AI art for my custom cards. Its great, I wouldnt be able to make my cards without it! Theres also a lot of work that goes into making AI art, a lot of customization and tweaking and training and model picking and creativity. AI art can be aesthically bad, and can be bad for certain workers, but it doesnt have to be. Also, AI makes new art the same way people do. It learns things about art its seen and puts them into its work. It can be used to make pretty direct copies, but it doesnt have to. I feel like saying "AI can only copy art" comes from a real lack of understanding of AI. Like do you know how a neural net works?
AI literally does not make art the same way people do, I'm not sure you understand the cognitive difference between an algorithm and consciousness, and that's a little worrying. I'm sure I'm not the first person to say this to you, but I feel it's important, you are coping. You aren't an artist, what you're doing requires no skill, a computer is unable to truly replicate the genuine and authentic act of creating art, and the time you're wasting on riding off of other people's talent could be better used to learn how to make your own art.
@numnut154 What I'm doing requires a lot of skill. I'd bet big money that you couldn't do it. Install Automatic1111, find and download a good model, and train it on a curated set of images. Make your own generative adversarial model and get it to produce good looking images. I bet you can't. Your asserting differences between AI and humans that aren't relevant. It's a big stretch, and I don't think you understand what AI is/does anyway. It learns how to make art the same way a person does, using neurons. The same way YOU had to see art and learn how to make art, so does the AI model. If using an AI model to make art is stealing, because it had to learn about art from preexisting art, YOU are stealing art because YOU had to see a lot of art before you could make good looking art yourself. It just learns a lot faster than you. Do you really think that learning how art is made from seeing other people's art constitutes stealing? I don't think it's stealing personally. It's wild to me to say that using AI to work on projects that are fulfilling to me is wated and that I should just learn how to draw myself. Why would I? I'm not interested in learning how to draw. If I enjoy the other parts of these projects more than the part where I have to draw pictures, why shouldn't I just use AI to get that part over with so I can focus on the parts I want and actually create something? It's a huge cope on the side of artists. You just want to gatekeep who gets to make art, and make sure that art stays hard to make. AI models can make a painting that looks like a painting a person made. If all I need is a painting for a project, why wouldn't that work for me? Why can't a computer replicate a "genuine" piece of art? The art I get looks good to me. And if AI CANT replicate "genuine" art, why would you be afraid or worried? Stop talking definitively about things you don't actually know about, that's just silly. Stop trying to gatekeep who gets to make art.
I don't think the idea that using generative AI to create art for your games is necessarily skimping. We're talking about a piece of technology that in it's infancy, so it's easy to make arguments that it lacks soul, feels lazy etc. If we get to a point where generative AI is easily better than the most talented artist on the planet, would it be fine? In regard to misusing it for profit, that's how it is for everything. You're focusing on scams people could engage in because of how simple it is to access the technology. What about all the amazing games you could get from all the amazing coding minds that couldn't make production level games before because they couldn't draw?
people who cant draw and want to make somthing usually hire someone that can draw or work on art until they get better. "not being able to draw" isnt a good moniker to work off of
@@ToxyTCG Oh, come on. The last thing an indie developer needs is a time sink and more expenses. It's a pretty good moniker since most tools in the industry and life exist to either allow people who can't do something to do it or allow people to do it quicker. Unreal Engine allows people to make games without having to worry about writing up an engine, Photoshop allows people to work on digital art, Stores allow people to buy things they cannot make themselves. Ironically, the reason you can even make this video is because of things other people have made.
@@shadowplayfx other /people/ have made that they spent time on because if you care about something youre making you spend time on it.
@@shadowplayfx also, what youre describing are tools that assist people who arestill using their own skill to create. typing a prompt into a generator and having it do all the work is not equivalent.
@@ToxyTCG Generative AI is also made by people. I'm not sure what your argument is. Right, time is a finite resource. Generative AI can be a great tool to get a functional, visually appealing game out in the public. I'm not sure why you're against exposure towards independent developers.
AI art is real art, have a nice day
Lol hating on an extremely small and niche entertainer for using AI to make something. This might come as a shocker but art is not cheap and most small projects aren't viable if you need to pay artists top dollar. I'm a developer and AI is amazing for allowing me to use my own abilities to make something without needing a budget or relying on someone else. Theres a big difference between large corpos and small time operations executed with maybe a handful of ppl, usually on the cheap too. Really you anti AI types are just gatekeeping for the establishment, the same establishment that actively tries to rip off its customers workers etc. I personally believe the lower the barrier to entry the more competition we will see which will create better working conditions. TLDR Divorced Dads is a small project made by a very small team. Hating all uses of AI just stifles creativity and competition, it reinforces the established corporations that can afford to pay massive teams to work on something. There is a big difference between Graeme using AI and wizards of the coast using it.
the original cards had just photos on them. I dont know why they couldnt go that route and use a little photoshop. you are also able to draw yourself. You can spend time refining a drawing. i agree that there is a differencewhich is why in the video i think its good they stated they want to move on to real artists. However, they already state they were using photoshop, so why not just take that the full mile??
@@ToxyTCG I run my own business which takes up most of my time and in case you are not aware coding a game is a massive undertaking. It's already hard to do something in your own spare time, AI finally gives me an avenue to getting something going. I have tried to work with artists before and in the end even though I'm also coding an entire game they value their art more, always want money and are unreliable. Multiple projects have amounted to nothing because of unreliable artists, which I get, they aren't being paid but that makes AI an obvious solution. I don't like drawing that's why I'm a programmer, I like coding. It's nice to not have to build a skill I dont enjoy to make something for a hobby I do enjoy daily. Obvi if I was rich Id hire someone to do the art. I'm not, so its either I make nothing, learn to draw at a commercially viable level, or use AI and enjoy making the thing that I dont even expect to profit from
@@jordanmeyler9239 there are artists that release free to use art.
@@ToxyTCG then u actually would be using filler art, the AI can still make the thing you specifically want and fairly accurately. Scouring free art for something that may kinda resemble what u had in mind is gna make a worse product in the end + its still much more effort. At the point ur just using free images whats the difference? No one is getting paid, and speaking from experience free art is alot less cohesive and objectively worse than what an AI could pump out. Especially considering the tech is in its infancy. Is it really somehow better If I take more time to make a worse product but avoid using AI? I think creating the best product I can within my scope and starting a new business to hire ppl in the future would be best. If I had a budget I would hire an art team as it stands I don't, and free art is really not viable not only due to aesthics but the technical aspects of building a game. A free asset wont be a full sprite sheet, it wont have fluid animations that fit into my game.
There is nothing good to say about a game they uses Ai images.
Jesus, your delivery on this is like you're confessing to a heinous crime. Calm down, they're just meme cards.
take me away man i did it i truly did it
show me one AI art that isn't a complete mess, even just a lil' mess...
I would rather play a game with stick figures/'programmer art' over a game made with AI art. Edit: Or hell, I'd rather a game just not feature art at all rather than have AI art.
I don't get what the problem with using AI art is
There isn't one. Shit artists just jealous.
3:02
you'll never believe this, but I pretty much outline my issues with it in the very video you commented on
The first problem is it's generally a "good enough" cheap solution that won't match everything else unless it's all garbage. The second problem is that it's obfuscated theft with extra steps. The third problem is that it's a red flag often using in low-effort low quality shovelware, scams, spam etc. If you're just using it as an internal placeholder because the artists haven't gotten back to you or it's not worth their time, fine. But if you put it out into the world as marketing or a product, it means it's not worth my time to see it.
I feel I was too rude in my last response. A big problem a lot of artists have with ai generated art is that it takes the creative process away from art, and that it is currently being utilized to undermine artists who put a lot of hard work into their craft. Artists who have been getting told for decades that they overprice their art are starting to see people get paid 5-6 figures for generating ai images, and it really stings. Companies are pushing for ai generation to save on money paying artists tht have been creating all of the stuff people love for, again, decades. On top of this, people misunderstandingly attribute media that isnt recieved well to the artists that create it rather than the company men who put restrictions on and dip their fingers into said media, and because of this they attempt to make "better" art utilizing ai generation, which also really stings.
The people defense ai "art" is just lack of soul as the ai "art" itself
"people who defend this new tool have no soul" what hyperbole lol
Your understanding of how AI image generation functions and how they are trained is very flawed.
Lol what a whiny nerd. Just don't buy ai cards.
this is fair
Ai art sucks
I think you hit the nail on the head, that art is your impression. When the first thing I see is AI generated images, the impression it gives is that no care has gone into the craft. If you don't respect artists enough to seek them out, don't respect art enough to make sure what you're showing people is crafted, what does that say about the rest of your game? If what you're showing me first is that you don't care about how your game looks or just want the cheapest possible output regardless of quality, why on earth am I going to consider your game? It's extremely disappointing to scroll through kickstarters and see AI art on cards.
Would it be acceptable to say the same for ai art as for people who choose to be overweight? No care has gone into themselves and they dont respect themselves enough to show themselves as being healthy.