A heads up: there are players who will skip games made with AI “as a tool” in any way and ignore anything the publishers offer from there on out.
Even a small use of what we’re calling “AI” in the wider world (and not the “enemy AI” from decades old games) has shown to cause long-term damage to the user’s perception. It’s basically designed and pushed to act like an addictive drug. Study results on this are alarming with how hard the Epstein class or whatever we’re calling it’s being pushed everywhere.
Most models seem to contribute to massive social and environmental damage.
On the social part, it wasn’t uncommon the past few years for digital artists to switch to pixel art to shake off or mess with scrapers for AI training datasets. The people who then spent that time feeding and tweaking scraped assets and art portfolios to train models to spit out credible pixel art have created widespread despair and outrage. That’s what you would be choosing to continue into by using “some” AI for pixel art.
Hiring an artist or finding an art mentor is easier when there’s trust, which for many creators is broken when presented with “slop” or otherwise pressured engage with someone who might not understand the basics of consent or moral rights.
This site is full of pixel art freebies that may be used as training assets and test fillers until you know exactly what you want for your game.
I bring this up because I feel sad when new developers learn about the potential consequences too late. Obviously, you can and will do what you want.