I was reading a comment to a Reddit post on r/legendofdragoon today. The post is AI slop, imagining Legend of Dragoon content in the form of Magic The Gathering cards. I’ve seen fan-made MTG cards with an LoD spin in the past, using fanart or just official/promo art. Sometimes the art choice and card effects were genuinely interesting! Today.. not so much. Just uninspired trash masked as great content, because the glamour is somehow that strong. Someone asked: “Is this community so deprived of fan art that we have to resort to this unethical AI slop?”
The short answer is that there’s no shortage of fanart in the LoD community, past or present. The visibility of such content is strained by the ever-worsening social media algorithms on Reddit, Facebook, and so on; but that’s its own gigantic part of the puzzle. For now I’d like to focus on the question above.
Unfortunately many people have been nudged or outright brainwashed into preferring low-quality content over high-quality content. The simple act of falling for AI art can easily cause an individual to stop caring about themselves, fellow humans, environmental impact, the growing wealth gap, and so on; usually at the subconscious level. People who like AI art will often tell you none of those things are their intent, and that they’re good people who just want good art. Unfortunately, that is ignorance at best, often met with resistance rather than a willingness to check their impulses.
For example: if AI-generated art is good, it implies that human art has value because it can’t exist without a library of reference images made by humans. It also implies human art is better, as humans tend to not mess up finger or leg counts (and generally are consent-oriented). That is the benefit of a consciousness and existence built up slowly over time, as opposed to forcing a program to be pseudo-sentient and stuffing a bunch of random data about another species into it all at once. Funnily enough this was covered in the show Extant, regarding a human who set up staggered stages of learning for their android child Ethan.
So why would AI art be preferred by people? Why are these generative models continuously iterated upon in the pursuit of better and better image output?
The answer is multifaceted and varies per person. One example is instant gratification at high speed. A vending machine of “infinite content”. Obviously, when we were kids we generally disliked time limits for watching TV, gaming, or being on the computer. However, those limits were set for us because adults knew kids wouldn’t regulate themselves well.
As adults we naturally impose less limits on ourselves. This is mostly innocent, but is also a slippery slope compounded by rapid advancements in tech-based entertainment in recent decades. As such, self-regulation has generally gone out the window. Many people scroll social media feeds, game or livestream, and so on for long periods of time. I am one such person, and frankly almost anyone near my age can relate. (I’m 36, 37 in exactly one month).
I believe this ended up dovetailing into AI consumption as well. In other words, “setting limits on how much content I consume, including AI content, is a bad idea. It would mean I am not drowning myself in content, therefore I will not impose limits on myself.” People generally don’t want to drown in content, but that is what’s happening. That is the trajectory they’re on.
There are other reasons AI art is attractive. I could go on about the obsession with maximum-definition/photo-realistic artwork, or the allure of easier-to-make deepfakes/non-consensual content in general. Again, it varies per person, but it all leads to the same polluted ocean.
AI art is candy for candy’s sake, built on active and passive harm to our psyche, the economy, and the environment. It doesn’t matter if there’s plenty of human-made fanart for LoD – or any other subject matter. “Plenty” isn’t enough – it has to be infinite, rapid, and constant. It needs to be jaw-dropping or funny at a glance. Bonus: it enables a free pass on corporate piracy (rules for people, but not corporations). All of this, feeding the bottomless hunger that never gets satiated by virtue of the format. For AI service providers, constant consumption is the point.
I will note that yes, there are plenty of people who struggle with self-control or self-discipline – or outright don’t care about it – while also condemning AI. I’m just saying that it’s a lot easier to fall for AI content in general when those personal guardrails are missing. With the failed grifts of cryptocurrency and NFTs, AI is the latest attempt to manipulate the mass public into doing stupid sh!t that is neither sustainable nor in service of their actual interests.
If you like AI, and you believe it’s good or that you’re a good person, that doesn’t change the fact that it causes widespread harm. It’s not just about feelings, respect, or consent. It’s about environmental and economic impact. If you struggle to care, then I appeal to your likely status of “not rich” and recommend you take note of the widening wealth gap being perpetuated by things like AI investments. That’s all I have to say for now. Thanks for reading.
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