With the development of artificial intelligence technology, AI drawing software is becoming more and more powerful and can generate realistic images based on text or pictures. This is an opportunity for the gaming industry to improve efficiency and reduce costs, but for beat writers, it could mean a wave of unemployment is coming.
A slew of game companies have already been quick to embrace technological change and introduce AI painting into their workflow in order to get rid of the huge talent pressure and funding anxiety in the game industry, according to Time Finance.
Game original artists are the core staff of game art, responsible for designing characters, scenes, props, etc. in games. They need to have a rich imagination, drawing skills and aesthetic qualities. But now, AI painting software can generate high-quality images in a few seconds, even exceeding the level of some original artists. This makes many original artists feel uneasy and afraid. Some game companies have started using AI painting software to assist or replace the work of original artists, thus shortening the development cycle and saving labor costs.
According to the news revealed by Huang Yimeng, the founder of Heartbeat Network earlier this year, he reportedly knows of a game team that has cut the original painting outsourcing team. The technical director of a game art outsourcing company also revealed that in the past month, his company has cut half of its original artists: “The original artists use Al to complete the program, and the work efficiency can be increased by at least 50%, and the already decreasing demand from the A-side is quickly absorbed. The company definitely won’t keep idle people, so those original artists who don’t have demand in their hands will have to be optimized. We needed 38 artists before, but now we’ve cut 20.”
Even the original artists working in big factories have to learn to use AI painting software and worry about their future.
It is reported that this AI impact on game original artists comes from a general-purpose plug-in called ControlNet, which was released in February this year. On the basis of this plug-in, AI drawing software Stable Diffusion can more accurately present the human pose, picture hierarchy, and complex three-dimensional structure, and support users to adjust the details of the picture, which will effectively solve the previous AI drawing difficult to solve the problem of limb details.
AI drawing software is currently not a complete replacement for humans, but also requires post-adjustment and optimization by the original artist. But it is already a powerful production tool that can help the original artist to complete the pre-creative and material. This means that original painters need more innovation and professionalism to compete and cooperate with each other and AI painting software.
