The use of artificial intelligence for creative purposes has exploded in recent months thanks to different tools such as Midjourney or ChatGPT. But while some talk about the democratization of art (because pencil and paper are still not accessible enough), some groups of creators are already having to deal with this industrial revolution, as my colleague Víctor called it.
The American scriptwriters union is already seeing how it manages the use of AIs and in Europe it seems that they are also going to start regulating with a critical eye. But meanwhile what many illustrators and animators feared has happened when artificial intelligence began to be used in the field of art, starting with some studies of China.
Fewer workers and less wages to pay
The field of illustration is one of the fields that is being “invaded” the most by AIs, and some companies are starting to opt to use these tools instead of hiring an illustrator. According to several Chinese illustrators, many Chinese companies are already generating their images to Rest of World in this way.
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“Artificial intelligence is developing at a speed beyond our imagination,” said Xu Yingying, an illustrator specializing in video games whose studio has already laid off five of its fifteen illustrators on staff for character designs. “[Con IAs]two people could potentially do the work that ten used to do.”
in the last few months the job offer for artists has plummeted, which has caused quite a bit of anxiety in the anime and video game industries. These works include a good number of tasks, from character design, scenarios, promotional posters or logos. The quality of art produced by AIs it has been getting better and better, so now when an illustrator is hired it is usually to fix details that still elude the programs.
According to illustrator Amber Yu, she used to charge between 3,000 and 7,000 yuan (390 to 900 euros) per video game poster, a task that required a lot of time and skill and could work for a whole week on the same image.
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However, Yu has noticed that fewer opportunities have come his way since February because studios are now using image generators to achieve a similar illustration. So now they hire her for small repairs offering her a tenth of what she previously charged. Tencent and NetEase are already implementing these work systems to cut costs, and miHoYo has even used AIs to create the voices of its characters.
“Our way of making a living is suddenly being destroyed,” said another Guangdog artist, while others are already considering training programs with their art to keep up their productivity. Yu also added that it is “despicable” how these programs are being trained with art that has taken decades to be produced by humans with the intention of replacing them.
Huang Yimeng, the founder of game studio XD, has also spoken on Twitter about how he has already spoken to two studios and noticed how fewer and fewer artists are being outsourced. One of them has directly stopped working with their usual animators and the other with freelance translators, with which the AIs are beginning to affect many more jobs than it seems. According to Wang Si, director of special effects for video games, almost 30% of employees in the industry have already been laid off in the first three months of the year.
The video game and animation industries were already very precarious before the arrival of artificial intelligence, but far from becoming a tool to make life easier for artists, it is now making it more complicated.
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The great fear of artists is already being fulfilled: this is how artificial intelligence is affecting anime and video game studios in China
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by Mariló Delgado.