Can I use "AI" generated assets for games?

I mean, you can do whatever you want. But I would strongly recommend not using AI at all.

If you can't draw (like me), then find an asset pack that's close enough to what you want and do some minor edits to make it fit. Even a quick little doodle will have more heart and soul than an AI can ever try to poorly emulate.

Ever seen a game called "Thomas was Alone"? Every character is made of simple rectangles in different colours and sizes. You don't need much.

A few thoughts as a 3D modeller that has done hired work based off provided AI concepts:

• The usability of those assets will depend on the kind of game you are making. Are they 2D? 3D? Sprites? etc AI can generate 2D pictures but cannot generate 3D models that are useful in a proper production workflow/pipeline. Every generated 3D model I've seen is a dogshit mess.

• Will you be the only one working with these assets? Sending untouched AI content off to another artist in the pipeline can cause extreme headaches depending on what it is.

• Things generated with AI have a very inconsistent artistic style. This is fine for rapid prototyping and quick concepts but awful for finished products.

• AI content is extremely difficult to edit and work with and may not even be editable at all.

• Legality varies by location, region, and storefront.

• Your customers will notice and you and your product will be ridiculed for using AI, especially if you use a lot of it.

Lastly, and this is going to get a bit spicy: If you care about the work you do and take even a tiny amount of pride in your work then please, for the love of the Gods, use assets made by real people. If you do not have the skills or equipment to make them yourself then there are plenty out there that are cheap, reasonably priced, or even free and royalty-free. Using AI content in a public release just screams "I am cheap and couldn't be bothered to hire actual talent." and indicates that you do not care about your work.

It depends on your jurisdiction, distribution platform, and the AI you use.

In the US and distributing on Steam you can use AI assets, but you do need to indicate your use of AI.

Keep a couple of things in mind though:

• Your future customers may not appreciate that you used AI and you will get downvoted reviews solely because you opted for AI
• You'll likely have a better result making as much as you can yourself and using AI to fill in the gaps (i.e. if you have an interior scene, make the models and lay stuff out and maybe only use AI for a picture hanging on the wall or a coach fabric material--things that are inconsequential to the actual game play).

Overall, I'd say if the supplemental use of AI during development is the difference between you finishing and publishing a game and you not, then sure--go ahead and use it, but make clear to prospective buyers how it was used and be prepared for blowback.

You can, but you will suffer the same fate as asset flippers and never amount to anything worthwhile. But if you do make a worthwhile game then no one will notice the ai generate assets unless they scrape the code, which only happens if your game has notoriety.

The licensing is going to depend largely on what model or service you use. I imagine the website will have an About or License page which will detail your uses.

If the license isn't permissive, it would be somewhat ironic since it's an open secret in the industry that those models are trained with stolen images.

Asking this question on lemmy is probably going to give you a spicy time. Many of us despise AI.

Can I use it as inspiration and make my own assets that are similar but not the same?

Legally, I don't imagine this would give you a problem. You'd be using the prompt as a reference and then creating your own assets. The generated image is likely to be watermarked in some way, so I'd recommend tracing it.

I'd really recommend you drop AI and run though. I suppose many people don't really care, but in the indie gaming community you could be burning a lot of goodwill by using it

If you're considering assets, you can get free ones from Kenney or Open Game Art. They might not meet all your needs, but they're an excellent tool for prototyping or supplementing your other assets

I'm sure it depends on where you're located and where you plan to sell the game.

Generally, you CAN use AI to generate stuff with no trouble. Usually that stuff can't be copyrighted unless you transform it in some way like having it generate a background and then you paint on top of it. The stores in which you sell it may require you to flag that you used AI, and some customers won't want to buy it.

You won't own it.

You don't have to use AI to generate everything. You could have it only replace certain aspects of your workflow. Ex: You could use a tool which looks at the 3d model you created/bought and then have it create a texture based on your prompt: https://github.com/FrederikHasecke/diffused-texture-addon

As others have mentioned, a consistent style will be an issue with AI generated... Anything.

There are ways to fix this. Either fine-tune your own model or create a Lora that will force the result to be consistent. You would need to learn how to do this by feeding it your own drawing style.

Copyright will always be an issue, it's on you to make sure that any result from the model does not infringe on anything (ex: asking it to make you an image/model that looks like Pikachu is certain to draw the attention of Nintendo's lawyers).

From what I understand, an art "style" can not be copyrighted, but definitely do some research on what could still happen. For instance, look at how Nintendo has reacted to Palworld, they can't sue them for using a similar style, but (in Japan at least) they can go after them for using specific game mechanics such as "throwing a ball object to have a creature appear where it is thrown".

You can definitely use as inspiration and reference without any license as long as what you make different enough. Like don't copy the designs exactly but you can overlay proportions and shapes roughly, but all the details, colors, style etc should be your own creation. Many artists already do this with stock images to streamline the process of asset creation. Things that are commonplace and recognizable objects like say a motorcycle: looks roughly the same minus the design style. Or an animal or common mythical creature will generally look similar in many features. They can be traced in proportion only. Inspiration: there is no law that says you can't use a copyright image as inspiration as long as it really doesn't resemble it. In other words, you can make a character that is inspired by a famous one but not one that looks too similar that it is recognized as an icon like that character.