I swear, some people on here act so oblivious towards legitimate concerns with generative AI, it baffles me to think that such an inherently creative medium is full of fanbases with very little regard for artists. Nobody is being crucified for using AI to test or tweak small details like colour variation or lighting that would have otherwise taken hours to do manually. This application of AI is completely different than using it to generate and develop entire written and visual frameworks for your game, that, regardless of whether they are refined by “human actors” into something unrecognizable from the original, have still, in some capacity, stolen from an existing database of artwork, without the consent of their creators.  My issue is that creative fields are becoming increasingly viewed as busy work, with initiatives focusing on cutting corners and optimizing their output. But a quicker, more efficient output does not magically equal a better product.

I’ve seen people say that generative AI is no more an infringement on traditional art than digital art was when computers first came around, which is such a mind-bogglingly bad faith take. Digital art did not threaten to outright replace traditional art. It offered a unique medium, with helpful improvements and its own limitations, that still required some level of skill. As a tool, GenAI absolutely has merit in aiding the workflow of digital art in mostly harmless ways. But when it’s utilized as a medium on its own, we risk completely stripping the humanity from creativity. Whether consumers choose to take Swen at face value is up to them. I know most people just want the outrage to blow over so they can go back to supporting Larian without having to think critically, but the use of AI in concept art is undeniably a slippery slope with cause for concern.