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AI-generated character art

Murdergurl

Murdergurl

Incorrigible Butt-Slut and Goblin Enthusiast
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Jul 5, 2020
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Barsoom
So I've been getting into AI generated art for the better part of a year now. I gotta say that it is SO addicting and such a great resource when trying to find that character pic that just doesn't seem to exist out there. I mean, there are limits of course. But I mean, if your character notion is super specific and obscure, you're gonna have a hard time finding preconceived art either way. But if you get good enough at writing you prompts and have the patience to sort through enough pics... eventually you get something that is close enough to what you wanted. And if there are little edits that need be done, you can fix them yourself with free online pic editors, and without having to have a whole lot of artistic ability.

I guess what I'm also trying to impress here is that you can essentially get some great character art for yourself without paying for anything. Because yeah, commissions are great and everything. But most of us don't have $50, $60, $100 + dollars just laying around to throw at some concept art for dirty online roleplay. At least, I know I don't. So, for all of you that are struggling to find good character art for your ideas, do a google search. There are a lot of free sites, and Stable Diffusion is probably one of the more popular AI generators. Though, I'm sure there are plenty of others. Also, pretty much all of the hosting sites that I've visited give you free reign to use the generator art however you want.

So what are everyone's thoughts on AI art? I think it's a great resource, and probably one of the better things to be applied to the RP community since map-making programs!
 
I've been playing with it myself. I like it for both this and concept art. I still like human created art, but for myself it allows me to express ideas without being a proper artist.
 
I've done a little tinkering with AI art, and I've been rather impressed (mostly) with the results.

The one site I found, though, wanted me to sign up after 5 free images, so that was a little discouraging.
 
Ethical and legal issues aside, I generally dislike AI generated images, simply because they look ugly to me. It probably has to do with how early AI stuff oversaturated porn art image boards, subreddits and Discords the same way generic "I let an ChatGPT write my script"-videos flooded YouTube, but I feel like all AI images have the same bland style; even those that don't use the typical style that edges the line between realistic and artsy have this soulless, uncreatively generic feel about them.

That said, if there's any good use for this sort of technology, using it for RP faceclaims is definitely one of them. I personally prefer to use visuals as a source of inspiration rather than the other way around, though, and the stuff AI spits out is about as uninspiring as it gets.
 
Sync said:
I've done a little tinkering with AI art, and I've been rather impressed (mostly) with the results.

The one site I found, though, wanted me to sign up after 5 free images, so that was a little discouraging.
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Try Perchance. Absolutely and totally free. They never ask anything of you.

Siph said:
Ethical and legal issues aside...
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What legal issues, may I ask, are you referring to? If you mean some kind of copyright infringement, there is none. Like I said before, most of the hosting sites actually blatantly state that you are free to use the images however you wish.

Siph said:
...I generally dislike AI generated images, simply because they look ugly to me...
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You probably need to work on your prompts. It took me a little bit to learn how to guide the generator into giving me good images. And also, negative prompts work wonders in turning crap generations into beautiful renditions by having the AI negate malefactors in the generated images.
 
Murdergurl said:
Like I said before, most of the hosting sites actually blatantly state that you are free to use the images however you wish.
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It's not a matter of what the company behind the AI allows you to do, but what they're allowed to do in the first place. Generative AI needs a butt load of data -- in this case, images -- to work, which is gathered almost always without the permission of the original creator. As far as I'm aware it's still in debate whether that violates copyright or not.

Murdergurl said:
You probably need to work on your prompts. It took me a little bit to learn how to guide the generator into giving me good images.
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I'm solely judging by what I've seen others post, I've never tried it myself.
 
Siph said:
It's not a matter of what the company behind the AI allows you to do, but what they're allowed to do in the first place. Generative AI needs a butt load of data -- in this case, images -- to work, which is gathered almost always without the permission of the original creator. As far as I'm aware it's still in debate whether that violates copyright or not.
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I mean, if you wanted to rule out all generated images as being a copyright infringement, that's the same thing as saying that all human-made art inspired by a previous work is also an infringement. There is no such thing as an original idea anymore, and to say that a concept or arrangement of shapes and colors is the sole property of someone is asinine.
 
Murdergurl said:
I mean, if you wanted to rule out a generated images as being a copyright infringement, that's the same thing as saying that all human-made art inspired by a previous work is also an infringement.
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That's one viewpoint, but another is that the human factor plays a vital part here; there's a difference between studying art and blindly throwing half the Internet into an artificial neural network. I'm not familiar enough with the subject matter to take a stance, though, and I wouldn't want to drag that debate into here either way.

Here's an article from a while back about Stable Diffusion specifically, if you want to read more. There's been more recent coverage about the NY Times's lawsuit against OpenAI, as well, which revolves around a fairly similar issue.
 
Oh, I love it! I use NovelAI's V3 to make all my anime-related art. And even some non-anime stuff. So long as it's not real person art, it is probably the best one out there right now, imo. Of course, using the best stuff isn't free. I'm subscribed to them, but I absolutely adore the stuff they let me make!

I'm pretty good with prompts, so if anyone would like advice, just hit me with a PM.
 
I donā€™t hate AI art, but nothing really hits like the artwork of a talented human being. It could make a character crazy to define, but I feel most of these images look somewhat generic with some exceptions. To each their own, I have my own sources for characters and that wonā€™t change, but if you enjoy the AI art and your partner doesnā€™t mind, have fun!
 
I have a very complicated relationship with AI in general. I don't like how it's trained and I don't like how artists, authors and the like are suffering from it. While some would argue it's not wrong because the source material isn't sold or showed to the public, I'm not sure I agree.

However, as the hypocrite I am, I don't know how to draw, nor can I afford to pay others to draw my characters for me. And using real people as face claims makes me uncomfortable sometimes, especially considering they (probably) have families and friends, and I can't possibly know if they or someone they know hang around forums like this one. And no, I don't live in the clouds thinking they actually are here, but it's a sobering thought.

To sum it up, AI can be a great resource for us RP folks, when it's used in a way that doesn't really lower the sales of actual artists. I doubt many of us would be prepared to pay others to draw our characters anyway.
 
I find one issue is that there's quite a specific look to it, that can be off putting. But if used solely in a 'closed system' for an RP and generated images are not allowed to 'escape into the wild' then its about as ethical as using other artists or photographers work as references - in either instance the original creator/s is not getting paid and as long as the generated images aren't out there detracting from the possibility of real artists getting commissions then, yeah it's on an equal footing to just linking to gelbooru or e621.
 
AI character art tends to have a 'house style' I don't mind too much, so I think it's of solid use if you want to convey a specific visual design for the purpose of roleplaying (assuming the people involved are similarly alright with that house style).

There was a manifesto on AI art in the most recent issue of Earthly Delights Ogdo that I found compelling (my own opinions are vague, shifting, and loosely-held), but the distribution for that issue has ended so if I have the time I'll clip it & host it somewhere if anyone here is interested in reading it.
 
I'm waiting until there are few hundred differnet enough models trained, maybe in more nieche sub-styles. So that we could mix and match.

Also I feel like there should be more than one AI in a pipeline. One AI generating image, another verifying result and verifying. It is quite tedious right now, to keep telling it to fix random stuff, make image more symetrical etc.

But I'm AI optimist, just feels like early-alpha version :)
 
I've played around with it a fair bit for making RP character pics and background settings such as castles and buildings. To me it is fascinating that it starts with random pixels and then the AI applies its neural network to turn out what is in the prompt. That's just WOW! to me.

However I can see the limitations in it. Sure the AI 'knows' what pictures of an arm or a hand look like, it has been trained on millions of stolen images of them, but it has no concept of how they actually work in the real world and hence that generates some real nightmare fuel in the images it creates.

Then of course there is the $64 million question. Sure AI generates images... But is it art?
 
Personally, I cannot stand it.

Call me dramatic, but as an artist myself-- I find AI art to be extremely just... nothing. Sure, you can generate a picture of a beautiful anime woman/man-- but where is the passion, where's the soul in the piece? I hope I'm not in the minority when I say I love to see and feel the artists' intent with each stroke of their pencil/digital pen. The colors they chose, the posing, the dynamics.

Maybe it's just because I draw a lot as well, but even in NSFW pieces, there's always an intent, a love, a passion I can almost like... subconsciously feel when I look at an artwork drawn by a human being.

Art is beautiful, and an expression of the soul. AI doesn't have a soul, it just takes people's work, and puts out some slop that I almost never actually enjoy looking at. Sure, it can look pretty for a few seconds, but once you start to zoom in and look at all the details it just doesn't appeal to me, it's especially disheartening when people would rather pay a machine to give them art than a human who loves the craft. I was pretty optimistic about AI when it was first coming out but now I can't help but feel annoyed at the influx I see flooding my pinterest and other art inspiration apps.

Use it in RP's or other places if you'd like, I'm just not personally a fan of seeing them unless we need a very specific reference for something. I'd take a shoddily drawn sketch over an AI 'art' piece any day though.
 
Follow up to my last post.

So, I'm speaking from experience as both someone who loves using AI Art, and someone who used to commission many artists, so I have experience with both.

Let me preface this by saying that I'm not really a spiritual person at all, so I've never viewed art as having a soul or anything like that. I find such arguments to be inherently silly and nonsensical. To be honest, not having to go through a person whenever I want a new picture is actually a good thing for me. People and their beliefs, their ideals, their biases, their limits, their judgements, their prejudices...none of it matters when you're dealing with an AI. Losing all of that is not a cost of using it for me, it's one of the main appeals. Trying to explain to someone what you want, hoping they won't treat you weird, refuse, or even mock you for it, really sucks. And even if they don't do that, then you potentially have to wait weeks (or sometimes months) for them to return to you with a single picture that might not even be what you wanted, as their interpretation of what you asked for was vastly different than what you imagined.

With AI, of course, it won't always grasp your vision, either. But that's okay, because you can just keep trying. Again, and again, and again, and again, tweaking your prompt as you go until you finally get just what you want. And maybe along the way, you even decide the initial idea wasn't as good as you thought it would be, so you make major changes, which also isn't a problem with AI.

If you were dealing with a human, on the other hand, then once things get out of the sketch phase, changing the piece becomes troublesome. They might even charge you more for it if the alterations are great enough. And let me tell you from experience, many artists get really grouchy if you change your mind partway through about something.

Furthermore, I really don't care about what pencil/brush or style they used to make the picture. It's the end result that matters. If it looks good, it looks good. If it doesn't, it doesn't. How much "heart and soul" they put into it does not impact the final product for me. And that is another thing that used to always annoy me when I would commission human artists: some get super pissed off if you modify a picture they make for you. Like, maybe it's been a while since I had a picture made, and I notice a flaw I didn't see before. Or maybe I just think a different colour would look better. I don't feel like having the artist change it and potentially paying more.

So I edited it using GIMP or Photoshop or something. Change the colour of the character's socks or coat. Not a big deal, right?

Well, some artists will treat it like you've mortally wounded them. How DARE you change THEIR work! Was it not good enough for you?!

Yeah, I've had those experiences before. To me, it's ridiculous. I paid them for a product. Said product is now mine to do with as I please. No, the day you, a random person on DeviantArt, drew a picture for me for $60 was not a sacred religious experience for me, I'm sorry. You can hate me if you want, but I thought my character's socks would look better black after all.

So, if AI can give me a nice looking picture without any of the drama that comes with working with human artists, then it's a win-win for me.
 
I think I probably said this (more or less) better on the forums somewhere earlier, but I'm fading out and dropping by with a quick bit.

I rather like Stable Diffusion, which is the only software I've really tried. Love is probably too strong, but do I enjoy playing with it every so often. I rarely get "exactly" what I wanted from it, but I'm happy when (usually after quite some time) I get something similar or something that gives me new ideas. Hopefully something attractive in itself.
I only use online software and I think version 1.5 was a whole lot easier for nsfw and kinky stuff, but I'm kind of dizzy when it comes to sorting out just the right prompts. I learned a tiny bit from surfing samples with prompts on discord... Maybe I should do more research like that, but I'm ambivalent about Discord/ kinda a masochist about trying on my own too. On the other hand, some sites do let you reset really fast even if they aren't as consistent.

It's a good resource for assembling a few particular pieces into a little concept, if you aren't too fussy. It does lack overall cohesion and (if you don't ask very insistently) emotion in my opinion. Without having downloaded all sorts of mods at least, it seems pretty weak about assembling multiple subjects in a way that I can really control how they're interacting. It's not the smartest or most obvious to use, but it mixes things that I might never find otherwise and it occasionally surprises me!
 
Not a fan of it. I know commissions art for something like an RP is certainly not tenable to 95% of RPers, and wouldn't suggest that - but IMO at least finding a piece of art and sourcing it to an artist is something that isn't too hard to do. I don't really like the idea of AI art and unfortunately it's here to stay. I do personally see it as theft in a way unless you are using an AI model that was trained on by 100% consenting artists who have made art specifically for the purpose of being blended into AI art.

Only semi jokingly, there's also this comic which I also agree with.

ZeSCQmln_o.png
 
I'm not a fan, personally. The great thing about all art, whether written, drawn or performed, is the message that it gets across, and the intentionality of how that message is conveyed is a huge part of it. As AI is merely imitating without understanding, I feel like that core, fundamental aspect is gone. Even if you are using someone else's art for a character, there is still an intentionality to the piece itself. With genAI, I don't get that.

Not only that, but there is a fun to art that I simply don't see in genAI art. With a human artist, I can appreciate the time and effort put in to make every detail sing, and make the whole thing something special. And as a creative myself, I am also proud of what I can make, and enjoy the process almost as much, if not more, than the result. I certainly wouldn't have fun letting ChatGPT write my RP posts. So if I won't let AI write for me, why would I let it draw for me?
 
I just saw some story about a competition to select a top model based on AI generated entries. The creator of each model made a bio for her as part of the entry in the contest. They have names, jobs, enrolled in college and even families of their own. LOL
 
I didn't realize one of my favorite character artworks for Orihime from Bleach was AI art šŸ˜±
 
I think it's fine to use AI for purposes like... well, this site. When we grab an image off Google Image Search to use as a face claim for something on this site, we're a) not making any kind of profit off of it, and b) using art that was freely available for non-commercial use online and that we almost certainly weren't going to pay for anyway (and wouldn't have been expected to pay for by the artist). I don't know if there are people who are actually hardcore enough to pay for commissioned artwork for their character on a smutty roleplay site, but if they exist, they're... well, edge cases.

Using AI for commercial purposes - like, having it create art that you'd have otherwise needed to pay an artist to do - is deeply legally and morally sketchy. The fact is, all of these AIs only work because they've hoovered up vast amounts of art that's been shared for free on the internet by human artists - work that the artists had a reasonable expectation wouldn't be plagiarized or stolen and used for commercial purposes, because that's illegal - and then fed it into their training algorithms. The creators of all the artwork that made these AIs possible have, by and large, not received a dime for the use of their work to train the AIs, and never granted (or were even asked for) their permission to use their art in that way. Their thanks for freely sharing all their wonderful art with us for all these years is that their livelihood is now threatened because the skills they've spent years honing can be replicated (sort of) by a machine that stole their work. That's deeply, fundamentally not okay, and its not-okay-ness isn't changed by the fact that the tools that have been created through the theft of their art are really cool and fun for us to play with.

Also, the whole "soulless" problem of AI art is real. When I use art for a character, I like to let little things about that art inform the character - quirks of their facial expression, their stance, etc. that bring to life something about their personality or suggest a history for them. I've done this with all kinds of art for all kinds of characters - but I've never seen an AI image that let me do it. The poses, the facial expressions, the scenes that AI depicts are just too flat and generic; AI-generated characters always look like lifeless dolls or mannequins; even if they're rendered with a great deal of technical skill, they've never got that "pop" that really makes a character come to life or makes you fall in love with them. Of course, at the rate these systems are improving, we could be years or months from AI getting much better in that regard, for all I know.
 
Apocrypha said:
Also, the whole "soulless" problem of AI art is real. When I use art for a character, I like to let little things about that art inform the character - quirks of their facial expression, their stance, etc. that bring to life something about their personality or suggest a history for them. I've done this with all kinds of art for all kinds of characters - but I've never seen an AI image that let me do it. The poses, the facial expressions, the scenes that AI depicts are just too flat and generic; AI-generated characters always look like lifeless dolls or mannequins; even if they're rendered with a great deal of technical skill, they've never got that "pop" that really makes a character come to life or makes you fall in love with them. Of course, at the rate these systems are improving, we could be years or months from AI getting much better in that regard, for all I know.
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I think we are essentially on the threshold of that period where AI art if going to become truly refined enough to get all that "soulless render" into a thing of the past.

Take these for example:
 
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