Reiji Miyajima, the creator of Rent-a-Girlfriend recently posted a picture and stated they were enjoying playing with AI art. This however, attracted critics of AI art as well as fans of his work to discuss the subject.
In his tweet, Miyajima states that he trained an AI model off of his own drawings and got a cute output of Chizuru from Rent-a-Girlfriend.
最近AIに興味持ち始めたので、僕の絵だけ学習させて水原のイラストを作ってみました！可愛い！ pic.twitter.com/WOAWi98q4B
— 宮島礼吏 Reiji Miyajima (@Miyajimareiji) March 26, 2024
The fan response has been largely supportive, though there have been some mixed reactions ranging from polite suggestions that actual drawings from Miyajima are better to comments criticizing his use of the tool.
These comments also transcend fanbases, with the same range of opinions coming from both English speakers and Japanese speakers.
We’ve covered AI art before here on Niche Gamer, and the controversy on the tool is largely twofold. First, the potentially unethical training of art modules. Some artists allege that it’s unethical for models to be trained on art without the artist’s consent, and that it should be treated as a type of theft. As seen above, a model trained on Miyajima’s art can reliably emulate his style.
If anything, the artist’s creation represents the most ethical use of AI art. It’s an image of his character, trained on images of his own artwork.
The second is a more philosophical argument that AI art is somehow aesthetically bankrupt for lacking human touch. While humans do make conscious choices on where to source their training data, what to input, and ultimately what gets published to viewers, the fact that no human hand creates the art is a point of contention, and many artists are starting to claim they can reliably identify AI art; however innocent artists have come under fire after having their work erroneously identified as AI-generated.
For now, AI art exists in a state of legal limbo as lawmakers sort out the ethics of model training and some companies such as Steam are reluctant to allow AI-generated content on their platform.
