Hi everyone — I’m a indie game developer, and I wanted to get some thoughts from you all.

I’ve been leaning heavily on AI in my work. At first it was just for coding help, but lately I’ve started using it for artwork as well. To me, it feels a lot like how we used to buy assets from the asset store — just another tool to get things done.

I personally haven’t faced any backlash, but I’ve seen a lot of pushback from players and other developers in general. Many people seem to feel really strongly against using AI, especially because it’s trained on other people’s creative work. I can understand that — the sense of loss or unfairness that comes with seeing your work or your craft being absorbed into a machine.

So I keep wondering: is it wrong to lean into AI like this? Or is it just the natural direction the industry is moving in?

Personally, I feel like it’s becoming just another tool — like plugins or pre-made assets — but I also feel a little uneasy about how much it depends on the work of others without their consent.

What do you think? Is embracing AI in game development unethical? Or is it just the reality of how things are evolving? I’d really love to hear your perspectives.

(moved to the right category)

There are two real issues here when it comes to AI usage:

1. You've mentioned it, AI has been trained with other people's artwork without consent. IOW it's basically stealing.

2. It's quite often to see people showing AI arts which have obvious flaws and people call these AI Slops. These slops drop AI art reputation. 

Adding to #2, if AI were used to code and there's an error somewhere, it would be really hard to find it since the user isn't a coder.

Is embracing AI in game development unethical?

Yes, based on two issues above.

#2 is also the reason why AI users are considered lazy. They can't be bothered to do the work themselves and they don't pay attention to the results.

I know it sounds harsh but that's the reality.

Though speaking of reality, with rising costs and economic issues, we will have more people using AI for their work. Not saying I'm happy with that.

I believe the ethics are rather more complicated shades of grey than a simple black-and-white stance.

Firstly, lets consider the creative theft issue. Where does one draw the line on training on other creative works? If I were an art student, would I not study existing art and techniques both ancient and modern? IS there not copyright legislation around 'transformation' and other fair use principles? Just how much would AI-produced art need to differ from the sources before one would consider it 'fair'? If you were to hire the best artist in the group, is that unfair on the other artists because they are simply not as good? Should you be forced to use lower-quality art for your project just to give less-good artists a chance?

I'm not saying yes or no to any of these questions, I'm just pointing out that these are important considerations.  Almost every technological advance in history has caused disruption for a subset of the population, but progress for everyone else... we cannot _stop_ that, but we do need to get a lot better at smoothing it out. That's what we need to focus on here.

I think the main problem with AI tools is that everyone is thinking of it as a replacement... including the people using it, the people creating it, and the people against it.

"AI" tools are badly misnamed data analysis tools. From that perspective they are incredibly powerful, and should be used accordingly. We are failing when we greedily try and use them to replace someone, rather than focusing on using them to make someone with the skills better and more efficient at their tasks.

As you said, you use AI to help with code... I'm assuming something like Copilot? Would you rely on it entirely to produce code without checking it? I imagine not, as it's far from anything like reliable. It's powerful only in setting down a foundation for you to build on, and that's how we should be using it.

The real problem is that people are accepting AI slop as 'good enough'. Recognize and demand real quality craftsmanship no matter what tools are used, and the problem goes away.

Asking the ethical question after establishing the angle comging from unconsented training data is shortsighted.

If you use ethical obtained training material there will still be the same problems with AI usage, as with unethical trained systems, but you can't use the training data ethics argument against them anymore.

There is arguments from power consumption. Those are bogus academical. Especially for image creation. I could run that on my desktop computer and running an artists computer for hours to create digital images will use even more power. We are not comparing pen&paper art vs. AI, we compare digital art vs. AI usage.

There is a bit of unethical argument from taking away jobs. But if I do not commission your art, but buy from a cheap sweat shop from exploited artists, that's not exactly ethical as well. Also, in context, the developers using AI do not have a budget to begin with. If they do not commision art, because they can't affort it, or because they use AI, will be the same for the commissionless artist.

Also, it was already a bit unethical to have a digital artist take away jobs from analog artists. They can do much more work in shorter time. I do not remember a big outcry then. But then again, I am not an artist, and would not have noticed. Having the AI artist (for lack of another word) do the same for the digital artist is just continuation.

But as you have pointed out, unlike other tools, in this case, the artists in question do not really embrace the tools. They are shunned and used by non-artists taking away some of the cake. Coders are a bit different, but that is another discussion. Let's focus on image creation art. For professinal digital artists, there are a huge amount of tools and helpers, and the big apps also feature ai prompt tools to edit images. I do not know how widely this is adopted, but it hints, that some artists do embrace the tech. At least the app makers do offer the tech.

I think a big issue is amateurs creating games. Because now they can. There are parallels to usage of game engines. Before the widespread availablitily of those, creating games was more of a professional thing and for highly talented enthusiasts. So games were a thing that had a certain standard of quality. Also, you would only mostly see games that were curated, since they would have had a publisher selling them. With self publishing and easy to use game engines ... well, most games here are only good in comparison to other amateur games.

And with AI, there is even more possibilty for no budget amateurs to create games. That is good for creative expression and as a hobby. But it is bad for average quality of so called indie games. A flood of AI slop with the occasional professional or talented AI user hidden in it.

I have little problems with an indie dev turning to AI to get a game done, so it will get done at all.

But I do not think it wise for small or big professional studios and devs to lean into AI. The players do not like AI very much. The bigger you are, the more unforgiving. There are other reasons as well, but ultimately it will be the players that decide. And having AI is not a badge to be proud of. In contrast to the indie badge.

As perspective. Do not underestimate procedural image creation. Who needs an AI, if you can just render a 3d model in different poses or make a 3d game.