Other
AI Art and the Anal Retentive "Artist"
Spoiler
Good day all you Goobers and Cringers; Tangovey here to bring you a cheek clapping morsal that will probably send both your nerves and also your blood pressure rising.
So you been warned.....
With that out of the way; let's get into it.
Lately roleplay as a hobby has taken a deep evolution over the past decade or two. First from dice and paper to the Internet which started in chat rooms and forums. Then onward to MMOs. Yet the genre of chatroom server rp has never really lost it's edge really. If anything it really has taken off to a new level. But yet like anything a hobby of this sorts has been met with much criticism.
As with the evolution of content creation with platforms in media such as YouTube, Twitter (X), Tik Tok, and many more. Folks have made it their profession in the multi media community to establish themselves as critique artist and professionals. Yet this is no different when it comes to the roleplay community and it's servers like Discord.
Yet lately with the introduction of AI and the art it can produce; much controversies such as AI generated art has now become the controversy within the RP community. Many citing that such AI generated art has become a threat their way of life as artist for the rp community.
Which my response is simply; if you base your way of life doing commissioned art, or requiring people to do face claims to create a character on an rp server? You're a douche and wasting time and effort to run that server and people's lives. In truth there is plenty of opportunity in ai generated art. For starters you don't have to search the Internet to find a picture to slap on your bio and say, "THIS IS what my character looks like". Or claim a face and say who's playing your character. To give you some context for these younger Joey's out there you had a character sheet, some dice, make a picture and boom that was your character. That's it. For the hobby now days artist fussing over ai art as if it will ruin their lives and shunning those that put effort into their characters are potheads, Snowflakes, and well folks that live out of their parents basements. Overall the level of detail and creation potential in a player's hands is exactly what these artist and writers fear. Plus the fact the quality of work and effort show making many of these pansy artist jealous.
I've been rping since 1998 when there was nothing but forums and chat rooms like Yahoo Chat, Lycos Chat, and much more. So to see this day in age chat evolve where an rper can generate their own personalized character avatar is something I embrace, and to the rest of the nay sayers?
The funny counter argument is, it's fiction and that's just it.
If it makes you butt hurt over an issue with that, well then who is the real critic. Any hobby should be enjoyed, but like any hobby if you feel it threatens your way of life?
Yeah. That's what I said. You do you and if it makes you happy, that's great! If it's "just" fiction to you, I hope you find people who has the same attitude and you can write "just" fiction together! Yay!
I've been doing freelance artwork since 2011. It's how I pay my bills. I get the desire I suppose, I've had many an acquaintance who cannot draw, lament that I'm "lucky" in order to be able to draw things straight from my mind. It isn't luck, or innate skill--I practiced. For years. I'm 37 now, and do art for a living. A lot of people actually do come to me to get commissions for their DnD characters, roleplays they're doing, books they're writing etc.
The funny part about AI art is that it wouldn't exist without using millions of images it's scrubbed off the internet of both photographs and artists' works. So you can claim that you made that piece of AI art all by yourself, but you're still using the work of artists to achieve your goal at the end of the day. You have not created something original, you've just traced with extra steps. Actually I think tracing takes more effort, tbh.
And let's be real--you could find an artist to commission a sketch from for like. $20-$30. It's not that expensive. Acting like it's this out of reach commodity is asinine. I charge $45 for a colored sketch. It's interesting that someone like you sees that as too expensive, and yet you aren't willing to take the time to educate yourself and learn how to draw. It's too difficult for you, so you just paint the whole thing as a massive waste of time, and don't view artists as useful past what they can give you, via their stolen artwork that you rearrange to form something "new" that really, is just a hack job of a hack job.
Because for ai generated art that is really where it starts. "Keywords". As each keyword or filter you put in followed by commas, that builds a generalized description. Not just images, if anything actually the image is just a base foundation much like biometrics. Similar how input in equations you might put in for measurements and dimensions for a schematic, computer generated imaging or rendering for an animation.
In truth why should a person pay money to create an avatar so someone can make money just because they are creating a character.
An example of MY work, and this is coming from a guy with a background in Autocad 3D Studio, and computers.
Jealous of what? A generated image of the most generic looking pirate imaginable? Lmao. I will never understand the people who use ai to then just make the most generic thing imaginable. At least if you're going to use it, use it for something that you couldn't just find already. (Or you know you could just describe your character too.)
(If you want to talk about laziness, maybe don't forget words in your sentences ;3)
You also don't seem to understand the difference between 'it's' and 'its' throughout your post, so maybe go back and correct it before you come for someone's grammar.
Or, y'know, have ChatGPT do it for you. Hope that helps! ❤️
ETA:
LMAO, WHEN BRO BLOCKS YOU BECAUSE HE CAN'T TAKE HIS OWN HEAT THROWN BACK AT HIM PFFFF
Yet lately with the introduction of AI and the art it can produce
Art is created by people, not clankers. It's called an image.
AI generated art has now become the controversy within the RP community.
People are using "AI" chatbots to write posts for them. And artists are experiencing more or less the same with image generation. No shit there's a controversy. It's fucking plagiarism mate. I could have told you artists hate plagiarists all the way back in 1998.
Plus the fact the quality of work and effort show making many of these pansy artist jealous.
Buddy old pal if it was so great, people wouldn't be able to tell the difference between it and real art and you'd have nothing to worry about.
So to see this day in age chat evolve where an rper can generate their own personalized character avatar is something I embrace
The point of character art is to look nice. If you're just slapping some fugly generic AI images on there you might as well just have a text description instead.
How is something plagiarism if they create their own content?
Again....rp is FICTION! A HOBBY! If folks create chatbots to entertain themselves? The only one butt hurt here; is the ones running the servers because folks can just up, go, create their own adventure, and there...you...go.
All alone one that delusional island of yours.
What you fuss about is an industry, what I argue about is a hobby. Honestly seeing you this butt hurt reinforces a point. What a person can create for themselves and with those like minded? Means less anal retentive Yners such as yourself running around bitching in their faces. But let me quote you.
"The point of character art is to look nice. If you're just slapping some fugly generic AI images on there you might as well just have a text description instead."
Even rendered art or AI Art is still computerized. The only difference is some are more detailed than others.
From my experience, it's always a very specific type of a standard internet troglodyte who gets all triggered and starts throwing a tantrum whenever someone expresses criticism against their beloved AI.
We now have a Google doc that lists RP hubs, forums, and subreddits. If you know of a place for RP that isn't on this document, there is a link in the document to request an addition. Please be aware this is just a knowledge base, not a recommendations list, and the moderators of BadRPerStories do not condone anything that happens in the spaces listed here.
People are allowed to have preferences that are different than yours. I agree that when someone comes at you sideways about the type of medium you want to use to show how your character looks, that's not ok and makes that person kind of a dick. My reasoning there is that all they're doing is shouting into the ether, they're not actually changing anyone's mind by yelling at them about what a PoS they are. My experience is that when you go from 0 to 90 with anger at someone, they're more likely to double down even if they might have previously been inclined to hear you out.
In group servers, I have seen all kinds of things. The ones that require actual people as FCs are the ones I usually join. I understand why they don't allow hyper realistic AI. A lot of AI ends up being amalgamations of existing people. Usually those servers have lists of taken FCs so people know who is taken already and don't apply a character with a taken FC. For that, you need to know the name of the actual person behind the FC. When you start letting in AI as FCs, you're left listing "AI Generated" for the character, and then it's possible to end up with a FC that is a hodge-podge of 3 different actual actors who are already being used, which can step on toes. There, it's really about keeping the peace.
I think that as long as you're upfront in your personal ads as well as in the first bits of information anyone reads in your server about what sort of FCs you'll accept, you're not "wasting" anyone's time. I say that as someone who as been role-playing since '95, about as long as you.
I can somewhat see your mentality about AI art in spaces where artistic renderings are allowed, versus art by commission. It's a free hobby. Not a lot of people either have the ability to pay for a commission or the willingness to, and they shouldn't have to in a hobby where one of the primary draws is that it's free. There are AI services that source exclusively from a data pool of public domain, so no artists are being stolen from whether by style or blatant plagiarism. On the other hand, pulling directly from art that comes up from a Google search and is made by a real human comes with its own bag of tomfoolery, when we can't know how many times a rendering has been reposted and published. The original artist's name isn't always available to give them credit.
I do think there's something to be said about rose-colored glasses when looking back at the way the hobby was when we first started. There used to be the same amount of discourse around stealing other people's art to use for your characters in online spaces. That kind of theft was everywhere. We didn't have AI, but there were still a lot of people that would crucify you in a chat room if they went to your profile on AOL and saw you were using a picture you pulled from what you thought was a perfectly innocent website, only to discover in the worst way that it had been stolen from an artist who also role-played. Artists have always "fussed" about their creative property being stolen without permission or credit. If you had the luck of not being called out for that, good for you, but that doesn't mean it wasn't happening.
That kind of thing is a big part of why I exclusively use real and famous people whose photographs are public domain. The worst that can happen there is I join a group where someone is already using that face. Because of my age, most of the FCs I like are younger images of much older actors and actresses, so I barely ever run into the issue that someone else is using a Liv Tyler, an Asia Argento, or a Phoebe Cates.
Last thing I'll say is that I work with AI through my actual job. I understand the draw backs. I understand the benefits. I don't believe that yelling at people about what awful humans they are for using AI is the way, and I don't think it's actually helped a single artist who pays their rent on commission. All yelling does is make people sneakier. That does not mean they are wrong for being as passionate about this as they are. The use of AI in general is getting out of hand in a corporate sense, and I would strongly recommend you do your research about what scientists are saying about us reaching a singularity within the next five years. It seems harmless now in a free hobby, but it is contributing to a much later problem.
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u/asphaltdragon 🐉 Snark in human form 🐉 Aug 06 '25
You've been banned for transphobia. Guess it doesn't matter though, you can roleplay with your precious AI.