Last week, Owlcat Games studio posted a vacancy for a concept artist for its next project. Among the requirements for the candidate was the experience of working with Midjourney, DALL-E or other neural networks with which you can generate art. This condition caused a flurry of criticism.
Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader
Anna Fedina from Blizzard Entertainment was one of the first to criticize Owlcat Games. She posted a disgruntled tweet on X, saying that at the beginning of her career she dreamed of working at Owlcat Games, but no longer wants to. In her opinion, the studio is acting unethically by resorting to the use of artificial intelligence, since neural networks "steal from artists." Besides, AI is not capable of creating anything original.
Fedina's position was supported by other artists. After negative comments began to actively appear under her tweet, Owlcat Games decided to react to what was happening.
The developers assured the audience that they intend to use AI only at the initial stage and will not add the generated art to the final version of the project.
"AI will be used exclusively for additional work with concepts and to speed up some internal processes. For example, for creative search, inspiration, or the formation of a vision before the start of the conceptualization itself. In the final version of the game, there will be no art generated by neural networks. This also applies to the final concepts. All the art will be original and drawn by professional artists," Owlcat Games wrote in response to the negative public reaction.
Owlcat Games also indicated that it did not work with AI when creating Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader and Pathfinder series games. The studio also stressed that under no circumstances would it replace artists with neural networks.
Guys, we would like to clarify this issue. We use AI as a working tool for our future project, which is in the early stages of production right now.
AI will be used exclusively for additional work with concepts and speeding up some internal processes (for example, for creative…— Owlcat Games (@OwlcatGames) March 2, 2024
The Owlcat Games post caused a new wave of criticism. The dissatisfied stated that the studio does not allow novice artists to gain experience and simply wants to save money.
You do realize young artists need to get in on the ground floor and gain experience doing the exact thing you're using AI for? You're undercutting the future of game art by going cheap and fast.
— Kat Loveland Voice Actor (@kat_loveland) March 2, 2024
As a result, Owlcat Games removed the mention of AI from the vacancy.
Curiously, against the background of criticism, the popularity of the vacancy has increased dramatically. Owlcat Games co-founder Ilya Karpinsky wrote on Facebook* that no other job of the company has ever received so many responses.
*Owned by Meta. It is recognized as an extremist organization in the Russian Federation, and its activities are prohibited in the country.