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There is already fairly high rate of hate towards using Ai to make content for your game without the person lifting a finger. 

While you can do it, the likelyhood of people not buying your game may be high, esp if the word spreads that your game clearly uses Ai. 

Also if you're going to hand make indicators, board tiles and rule book, then finish it by making your own images for the cards. 

I recently made my own card game to play just with my family and I used nothing but free-license images and the public domain, and I printed and cut out, making the rules by hand. 

Personally, the only time Ai should be used in a project like making a game is brain storming and notes. 

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without the person lifting a finger. 
I used nothing but free-license images and the public domain

Soo, you did not lift a finger to create the images yourself, like you give as advice: then finish it by making your own images for the cards. 

This is what irks me in discussions about AI. The inconsistency. If you are against AI because of X, you would have to be against other things involving X. And if it would be pointed out that X is actually not a major factor, you would even have to change your opinion or be a hypocrite.

That particular argument would be, that using ai is akin to not lifting a finger. But using public domain images is lifting even less fingers.

People not liking ai very much is demonstrably true. There are surveys about that kind of thing. It is a valid argument to not use ai. But if you qualify it by things like low effort, you water down your argument. You make it vulnerable to things like the low effort actually not being true in context. One can put a lot of effort into using ai, and using public domain assets would be even less effort. 

Sorry, let me be more clear, when I say "lifting a finger" I mean go out and put the time and effort into trying to find a good website that hosts images, effort into sorting the images, searching for the ones you like and downloading them. 

So yes, I did lift a finger. Also the images I found esp on public domain were all made by humans. 

While writing a prompt is somewhat effort the same way I type in the pubic domain search box, but the big difference is how the images are. On one hand the images I got are human made, I had to go through tons of them to get the ones I needed, but on the other hand, you got yours via a ai generator, a generator that was fed stolen art as training data for you to get the image you want in 30 seconds. 


So using an Ai image generator is below the "Low effort" bottom of the barrel, cause it shows you can't find what you are looking for yourself without having to get some bot that was trained on stolen artwork that spit out content on mass. To be clear, what I did IS classed as low effort, but I didn't stoop that low that I had to use AI-generated images. And If I were to make a card game and publish it to the public I would create all the images myself. 

P.S: To be clear, I'm not telling you don't use Ai to make images, I'm just telling you my pov on the matter. Because using ai to make images for a game is the peak of laziness and one could be slightly less lazy by discovering what they need online that's already there. 

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Maybe you misunderstood. I advocate for using better arguments. 

Opinion/Argument/Advice: Avoid AI. People do not like it. You will have less customers because they do not like it.

That is clear cause and effect and one can even bolster this by citing surveys where people tell their preferences about ai.

Compare to opinion/argument: Avoid AI. It is low effort. People do not like low effort. You will have less customers because of that.

That is presented as clear cause and effect, but it is flawed. It's simply not generally true. Creating ai images yourself is not as easy as it sounds. And it can be a lot more work than just browsing for free human made images. Also, you could have hand edit your ai images. There is no category for ai images that are heavily hand edited. They are still just denoted as ai graphics.

And it gets worse since you mentioned your own method of using free assets for a contrast. If you can shrug off ai usage as low effort, so can other people shrug off your browsing for the right image as low effort. How would they know that you did not just pick the first result. And if you think selecting the right images is creative input, well, crafting a prompt and selecting the right results is a similar level of input.

In your reply just now you mentioned the stolen art argument. It's a blanket exagerration and technically not correct.  Also, you do not know if it is even true in the weak sense of unconsented training data for any particular ai system. An artist can train a network with self made art. The training data could have been 100% consented or public domain. Especially for audio you will even find things that were trained with specifically created training material. This stolen art argument is short sighted and generalizes too much. 

So my point here is: you want strong arguments against ai usage. Not weak arguments that might crumble under scrutiny or depend on personal opinion. 

That customers on average are not fans of ai is objective truth. No matter what anyone thinks about legality, lazyness or morality.

That ai usage is low effort depends highly on the developer. You do not know how lazy they were. 

That art is stolen is subjective opinion. If it were objective, ai would be outlawed and we would not have such discussions.

"Creating ai images yourself is not as easy as it sounds. And it can be a lot more work than just browsing for free human made images" 

Yet you don't back up your own claim, you just say it does. 

"Also, you could have hand edit your ai images."

Once again you never claimed you did.

You claim you advocate for better arguments but you're doing what you're claiming I'm doing. 



"If you can shrug off ai usage as low effort, so can other people shrug off your browsing for the right image as low effort. How would they know that you did not just pick the first result. And if you think selecting the right images is creative input, well, crafting a prompt and selecting the right results is a similar level of input."

Biggest difference is people are more likely to spot Ai useage and have a negative reaction compared to an image that looks like it's low effort but real/from public domain. AI images all have that "feel" that gives off it's Ai, the errors in the image, the classic warm hue, missing limbs/extra limbs, background items that don't seem to make sense such as a distorted coffee mug etc. When a person looks at images from the public domain, they'll see no traces of Ai and care less about the effort behind it all. Sure it's subject to the views of each person as each person sees things differently but for the most art, a lot of people don't assume the image they are seeing is real/hand made. 


"In your reply just now you mentioned the stolen art argument. It's a blanket exaggeration and technically not correct."
Yet you don't back up your claims like I didn't.

"The training data could have been 100% consented or public domain. Especially for audio you will even find things that were trained with specifically created training material. This stolen art argument is short sighted and generalizes too much"
Yet again you don't back up your claims, "could have" how do you know it could? How do you know it wasn't? 

It's one thing to break down my own opinions and arguments, but you can't pick a part my arguments and pointout their flaws while also making arguments that are flawed just like my own, the very same thing you're pointing out that's flawed. 

"So my point here is: you want strong arguments against ai usage. Not weak arguments that might crumble under scrutiny or depend on personal opinion." 
Just like how you're using weak arguments (such as you claiming training data 'could' have been consented without backing this claim up) or based on personal opinion (such as That ai usage is low effort depends highly on the developer. You do not know how lazy they were.) is a personal opinion.

Lastly, 

"That ai usage is low effort depends highly on the developer. You do not know how lazy they were. " 
WRONG. Laziness/low effort is highly dependent on how the outside views you and your work. If you think you are not lazy but everyone thinks you are, the likely hood of you being right is fairly low.. It's one thing not to let others sway your thoughts, but if one always thinks "My opinion/how I do things is always right and everyone else is always wrong" is a fairly toxic way of thinking. 

"That art is stolen is a subjective opinion. If it were objective, ai would be outlawed and we would not have such discussions."
It's no an opinion, it's a fact that has been covered by media. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/apr/12/is-ai-the-greatest-art-heist-in-hi... https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Getty-Images-v-Stability-AI....

Also there is a website called "Seaartai" that has a ton of free use ai models that has a ton of image models that were used to train on a lot of artist's art styles.


You respond to my reply to OP trying to pick a part my arguments saying they're weak and have personal opinions.. but then you try to correct me with said weak arguments and person opinions.. surely you see the irony right? 

Anyways, It's clear this bickering isn't providing any useful point at all and I'll end it right here. 

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What I am still trying to tell you is this: you need better arguments. The one you brought was weak and you undermined it.  You made your anti-ai argument about low effort while talking at the same time of the little effort you yourself used. You gave advice but did not use your own advice. Would you listen to someone preaching water instead of cola, if they brag about their private homebrew lemonade party?

If you use arguments that depend on opinion, you can only convince people that already share your opinion. If you cite ai as low effort to someone that spent days to create a few images that barely fit the requirement for a project, your claim does not fit their experience. And if you claim low effort to ai users that do hand edit their works, you also fail here. You are just accusing them of lazyness.

Your refusal of my points boils down to me not bolstering them with citations? Then were is your citation that ai usage equals low effort while at the same time downloading free images would not be low effort?

Where is your citation that all ai training data is stolen? Oh, wait you did cite articles. Let's see. The guardian thing is an opinion piece. The only thing this proves is that the author of the article has an opinion. So to refute my arguments you cite an opinion? Come on.

And you cite a document about a legal dispute against one specific ai model, in response to my claim that it is not generally accepted that ai art is stolen. I argued if this were true, we would see consequences of that, like a legal ban on ai.

Please read the conclusion of that document you cited. The legal claims were dismissed, except for a minor claim. And that involves basically recreating something where someone else has rights to it. And that is trivially true, as it would also not be legal do this with pen and paper.

The plea of Aleks above was better. The product will be seen as lesser 

Also your own plea just now was good: to spot Ai useage and have a negative reaction 

It explains some reasons behind: Avoid AI. People do not like it.

 You could even argue that some people think it is stolen, and therefore do not like it. But do not try to argue it is stolen. Because that ain't true in a legal sense. If potential ai users fact check this, they might just decide to use ai, since the ai opponent used a faulty argument.

Fact checking if people dislike ai yields this: https://quanticfoundry.com/2025/12/18/gen-ai/  62% very negative. Only 7% positive.

Like I said, this argument isn't going anywhere. Good Day.