I wonder.
Would you be interested in seeing images (both SFW and NSFW) to visualize some story scenes occasionally?
Ideally, I'd love to commission artists for this, but let's be real: that's just not financially feasible. Quality commissions run anywhere from $300-$1000+ depending on quality, complexity and character count. Even if I dedicated 100% of Patreon earnings to art, we'd maybe get one or two pieces a year at best.
I'm not a professional writer. This is a passion project, and I'm genuinely grateful you're here supporting it. But I wanted to put this to a vote and see what you think about AI-generated visuals as an alternative.
Note: If this project ever takes off in a bigger way, my goal would be to replace any AI art with work from professional artists.
Comments (2)
There is no ethical use of generative AI. 1: It is trained by stealing the work of artists with neither consent nor payment. 2: It utterly usurps the market for artists. Why pay artists for a commission when you can have a techbro product spit out something in their style trained on their stolen artwork? 3: These things are massive energy hogs, driving up power prices for everyone else and wasting billions of dollars on technology who's only purpose is to make the world a shittier, dumber place. There is another corollary for writers: It makes it all but impossible to market your work because it has filled the entire space with reams of slop, making finding it virtually impossible. Those, like yourself, who have gone with the royalroad/other site method of publishing/advertising are victim to another problem: I have lost count of the times where someone just took a publicly viewable webnovel and fed it through an AI model to obscure the origin a bit so they could publish it for a quick buck. Sure it happened before, but this tech just makes it even harder to catch and stop. Please, do not do this.
I see where you're coming from, but I also understand the other point of view. Artists feel like they're being replaced by something that can churn out 100 images per hour without years of practice. That really gets to you, and I totally understand. But I think the main issue about AI "stealing" work is the speed of AI (Both learning and working). People learn to draw by studying other artists, just like AI does. The problem with AI is that it can do it 100x faster while also drawing 1000x times faster. I think that AI art is like having a helmet that can take a picture of your imagination. If someone created such a device, I bet it would result with the same sort of backlash, since anyone could create any picture in a second. But just as photography didn't replace portrait painting, AI won't replace jobs for artists. There'll still be a market for real art. There's still something special about original work that AI just can't recreate. If you try to copy the style of Author X, it's not going to be as interesting as one of their actual books. The same goes for AI art. An image in the style of Artist Y won't evoke the same feelings as one of Artist Y's paintings. I think the main problem with AI is that big companies use it to cut corners. I don't think an average person who just wants a cool picture for their D&D character would have commissioned an artist anyway. It's like the whole piracy debate, isn't it? Most people who pirate wouldn't have bought the product in the first place. Same goes for art commissions. People who really value art will still hire artists. I'll give you an example. I started with an AI cover for Princess of Hell, but when I could afford it, I commissioned a real artist to do a better job. The webnovel plagiarism issue concerning, but should we ban the technology because some people misuse it? We don't ban Photoshop because someone could misuse it. As for energy consumption, I'll concede on that point. Though, I still think it's the greedy corporations' fault, though, because they push AI into everything to get as much money as possible before the bubble pops. PS: This is my opinion, but I know not everyone has the same mindset, thus the poll.