AI Art for Games - A World of Imaginary Friends

“I don't want realism. I want magic!”

― Tennessee Williams

One does not need to understand something to copy that something. This fact has specific ramifications when considering the human mind & genome. AIs exist because of this truth. An AI engine doesn’t need to understand humans to act or make art like a human. At our current stage of development, all an AI needs is a person to validate its attempted copy. If you ever watched HBO’s West World and wondered what the engineers were doing with the hosts in the glass menagerie, this is the naked truth. But what if instead of a single engineer you have an entire internet’s worth of people testing the AIs fidelity/accuracy?

“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”

― Tennessee Williams

Thispersondoesnotexist.com is a site with a single function; it shows you a different photo realistic AI-generated portrait every time you refresh. This can be both creepy & useful as a writing tool. The mental heavy lifting of imagining character faces in detail now has a short cut; you can base your description off a photo of a simulated person. Give every NPCs who populates your worlds a face! Finally a solution to your players’ most annoying habit: asking about the one NPC who isn’t fleshed out. Just pull this site up & tell them what they see.

“There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.”

― Tennessee Williams

DVD screen grab of the space princess from Star Wars 1976, gem armor, mech armor, warrior princess --v 4 --q 2 --ar 32

Working with the AI engines, you can create materials with aesthetics that match your roleplaying campaigns or reinterpret characters for different worlds. Embracing a hybrid mind, can feed your creative process with new descriptions, environments, and situations. Put to use an imaginative co-pilot who indulges any idea no matter how ludicrous: “What would a Wes Anderson Star Wars movie look like?” or “Show me the life of homeless muppets in 1981.” Beyond the novelty, the future skill to embrace is thinking bigger faster. What will you build now that you have near unlimited material?

“Time is the longest distance between two places.”

― Tennessee Williams

Imagine impossible things and ask them to exist. Actualize your vision by populating those worlds with people and things. Ambition & approachability can be the new metrics for success. As we race towards the singularity, by 2029 AIs will pass “The Turing Test” - they will be able to hold convincing enough conversations that you won’t be able to distinguish between them and us. How long will it be before we have AI Dungeon Masters or Players? Will you have your bot sub in for you when your adult schedule keeps you from attending your play session? Get ready for that not so distant future by imagining endeavors where you put to use an unlimited number of actors, but also think about how you can get other humans to care about what you’re doing.

“I think that hate is a feeling that can only exist where there is no understanding.”

― Tennessee Williams

Every advancement is a trade. Humans discover a thing before they understand how awful that thing is for them. Every breakthrough requires clean up after. AIs will copy first & understand after and that will have dire consequences in the short term. Just like nuclear power & the internet, we will probably survive after more than a few tense moments. What is guaranteed to change is the world we live in & our place in it. Dream big enough to embrace those changes.