What used to require a workforce of 10 people can now be done with just two people with AI.
Image-generating AI tools are already putting some of China’s human artists and video game illustrators out of work.
Video game illustrator Amber Yu says she was paid between $430 and $1,000 to create video game posters. Still, now that some companies use AI to create such images, he is mainly hired to make minor corrections and edits to the AI-generated drawings.
Zhou Yingjing, an active illustrator at a Chinese game studio, also says: “Artificial intelligence is developing at speed beyond our imagination.” Zhou Studio fired 15 video game illustrators this year for using artificial intelligence image generation tools.
“With artificial intelligence, what used to require ten workers can now be done with just two,” Zhou added. This situation is sad, and unfortunately, it is possible that in the future, we will again see the dismissal of human labor and its replacement by artificial intelligence.
Goldman Sachs released a note late last month arguing that artificial intelligence has the potential to automate 300 million jobs. Whenever we talk about images produced with artificial intelligence, the performance of programs like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion improves in creating images.
Futurism writes that China’s video game market has experienced complex conditions recently. The suspension of government licenses in the country from 2021 has forced thousands of gaming companies to close, creating a new job crisis across the gaming industry.
Meanwhile, some game studios say they will only partially replace AI with human artists, but using the said technology has helped reduce their costs.
However, some game artists and illustrators now feel the potential threat from AI and may lose their jobs in the future.