It Came From Outer Space

Like many Artists, I've been struggling to resolve my feelings over AI generated Art. As someone who's spent thousands of hours developing a craft, I have a lot of fear, anger, and skepticism on the technology and the way it's been developed. As someone who's made a career for the past 25 years developing games, I know that embracing new tools and technologies is part of the gig, and it's a part that brings constant learning and growth and has kept me motivated and excited for a quarter of a century.

I've been around long enough to remember when Motion Capture first started making it's way into the industry, people were up in arms, "this is not art!", "all the animators are going to lose their jobs" etc. I remember debates about photobashing, "using photos in concept art is cheating". Digital sculpting, 3D Scan data, photogrammetry, even digital art as a whole has been debated "is this really art?"

The parallels are obvious. I can wish this technology had been developed in a more responsible manner, or even wish it didn't exist at all, but it's here and it's not going away. Much like all of those other technologies, in a year or two this will just be part of the way we work. The industry moves forward, as artists we can either adapt and learn, or get left behind.

With all that said I wanted to find a process that *I* felt comfortable with, a workflow that allowed me to take advantage of this technology and improve speed and quality while still maintaining creative intent, creative control, and still feeling like my craft skills were a vital part of developing the art. I've come to a place I feel pretty good about, where I keep the most vital aspects of the development mine and use the technology to just speed that along. But there are those who still feel this is "cheating" or "doesn't count" or "isn't real art", to each their own I guess.

To my fellow artists, if you're scared and upset that's fine. Be scared and upset. But we should be learning this technology, if the art community is not driving it someone else will, we do ourselves no favors by not having a seat at the table.