i’m torn. if you want to have a portrait, generate it however you feel. i personally dislike AI art because i am a musician and [long rant excised] but y’know. it turned out one of our players really liked drawing and drew portraits of our characters that were better than what each of us did, which was really neat and special. but that didn’t happen until each of us tried on our own first, right?

That’s some loaded language, but they’re right. AI tokens are bad and they should feel bad.

Copying from art sites doesn’t destroy the environment and doesn’t flood the internet with slop and isn’t used to justify firing maaaive numbers of people.

The key is to plagiarize your obscure favorites. They don’t know about the material, and you get to make them experience it!

So when googling icons and using them, do you take note of the source? I’ve come across many where the artist specifically says not to use the image in tabletops or rpgs or icons or profile pics. You’re directly disrespecting the author if you straight up use their image(s) in the tabletop against their wishes.

As for environmentally-destroying image generators, I only use local models I can run on my own pc. A microwave is 5x more environmentally impactful, and if I want generic_npc_worker_328, I take it as an artistic direction to ai generate a token of said generic_npc_worker_328…

“Curse of Straud” is fantastic, and blatantly uses Bram Stoker’s work. If Bram were Disney, we wouldn’t have “Curse of Straud”.

You’re directly disrespecting the author if you straight up use their image(s) in the tabletop against their wishes.

Using a government logo, a still from a movie, middle age snails riding knights, or something someone made last week are all the same thing when used for non-commercial purposes. I don’t care about the artist’s opinion when not using it for commercial purposes.

Shouldn’t the first image be “Successfully scheduling?”

I shuddered reading your comment. Scheduling is the worst.

Now that’s just unrealistic expectations.

Fair use is not disrespectful, it’s not illegal, it’s not worsening the climate crisis like your local models.

Gaming on a pc worsens the climate crisis more than me once in a while using a local model.

Plagiarism is just the way human culture is supposed to work.

yeah but is it really worth it to learn how to draw and color etc only for the purposes of a D&D portrait? maybe for some, and obv my players get the choice to do whatever, but with day jobs and lives, getting together to play itself is a commitment so I don’t see the issue in creating a one-time portrait just for the purposes of quick execution

I’m also a musician and artist and I rant about AI art and its effects all the time so yeah I get it

Today, im my dnd session, my players befriended a dirty, covered in mud druid. Turning his life around, and convincing him to rejoin society, and not fight the party.

Immediately after they killed a pimp.

that’s the thing, if you do it yourself in crayon it’s better than whatever the AI does. again, i don’t really care at my table what the other players do, but human > AI all day every day. Honestly, i see the LLM bullshit as a crutch that gets folk who can’t or don’t have the time to be able to approximate what those of us who have invested the time and blood and sweat into getting the skills. i don’t really mind crutches as long as you have a person thinking things through in there, but if you’re using crutches exclusively, right?

Oh so they’re environment and sex worker hating villains

Maybe haha

But remember to call it always, please, “research”.