I had to reply twice here because you brought something up that I think is crazy important:
"I mean I'll speak from experience. As I'm trying to design a long term RPG.
My friend is showing me artwork of one of my characters "Cookie", and I appreciate his help. At the same time, I can tell the images he's showing me are AI and that none of them would ever realistically work for me. The artwork is far from what I would want, and the stylization is so strongly AI that it's off putting. I have a very strong feeling that, no matter how much I prompt the AI, I will never get a "Cookie" that I like. the Cookie that was made several years ago by someone when this was an undetermined RPG feels much more authentic than any of the AI artwork he offered."
This is true of 99% of AI art output. What's more, it's an uncomfortable experience I could relate to even far back before AI was ever a thing.
I worked on a game for a few years and along the way I had people approach me like, "hey I can make the art for your game", and I'd say "wow, thank you". I would hand over the crude cast of characters I had at the time, I think there were 7 of them, and no matter who it was that offered or how many times I got the offer, one of these things would happen:
- often it was just nothing at all
- they would come back with 1 or 2 characters half-done then disappear
- they would come back with 2 or 3 characters done, but their art style clashed too hard with everything else
- they would come back with 1 or 2 characters done, but the characters were unrecognizable and would require re-spriting, etc.
- no one ever got past maybe 3 or 4 characters sketched or finshed
This happened with or without pay incentives. It also always happened without any malice or ill-intent. Life gets busy. But it would lead to that same awkwardness you feel when you don't wanna say, "that looks amazing and I appreciate the effort but I can't use that". To me, being able to snip this whole part out of the process is such a big deal.
In an ideal world, if I had all the funds I could ever want, I'd cook it up and brainstorm and prototype with AI all the way up until it's ready for release. Then, I'd scour the net for artists. Anyone, big or small, just pure vibes and art style. I'd find the artists that had a portfolio where something spoke to me and I'd reach out like, "hey, I've got this game ready to go but it's a walking skeleton and I need artists to breath in some life... would you play a free copy and, if you feel like you could see yourself in this world, would you be available for hire to do this project's artwork?" But that's just me.