When I tell people I use AI, I'm often met with very negative assumptions. I try to explain my point of view, but many people are dedicated to their stance. For everyone else, here's a few examples of how I've used AI in my art.
This is a side-by-side comparison of my work without AI (left). With a simple prompt like, "Please make this feel more polished and magical," I got a version that felt a lot more like what I saw in my head. When you compare them, it's clear what parts are AI, but the influence of the original cannot be ignored. The same goes for a lot of my work that's done for free for the community, like this poster.
Now, there are levels to how much I will use AI. If it's for the sake of art, I try to use it as little as possible. However I've found that for unpaid favors, especially designing posters for events, I rely on AI more heavily for the sake of speed and quality. Some of the before-and-after images still make me laugh.
It's important for me to add some posters I've designed without AI for comparison:
In this next example, I was brainstorming for a new character's design. I knew in my head what I wanted him to look like but every sketch felt wrong. So I gave my design of another character wearing his clothes as a reference along with my description of the character and got a nice character sheet. I will not be using the assets from the character sheet, but they make a nice reference. I'll draw the character myself, but several touches, like the glasses, helped fill in gaps in design.
Once again sharing these snippets of my process is not about arguing for or against AI. It's just about transparency and showing how I've formed my own personal pipelines using AI. Someone once called AI a mirror, or an echo chamber, but I would say I use it more like a selfie-filter or assistant. Anyways if you read this far, thank you. I hope it gave you a clear idea of how I use AI in art.
-Ren