As the debate around AI art keeps happening, the developers behind the Persona franchise chime in, claiming that the technology has some good uses for the industry. The Persona team is currently looking into ways to use AI art as part of game development in the near future.
Ever since the release of Persona 3 for the PS2 back in 2006, the spin-off Shin Megami Tensei series Persona became a huge hit, creating its own brand in the process. The series is well-known for its style, including its jazzy, electronic music and cel-shaded art. Now, while fans wait for the announcement of Persona 6 and want to know more about the upcoming mobile-based Persona 5: The Phantom X, the team is in the spotlight once more due to a controversial opinion.
In a recent interview, the creative director behind the Persona series Kazuhisa Wada shared his opinion about AI. The developer claims to be personally interested in the technology and believes that it has the potential to be used in many interesting ways in the future. Surprisingly, the mind behind one of the games with the best cel-shaded art in the industry doesn’t seem to be against AI art. He even revealed that the Persona team is already discussing ways to implement AI in future games.
There are already some gaming projects primarily using AI-generated art, but that does not seem to be the goal here. Wada is not saying that AI art can replace artists or even that works fully made with AI are acceptable or will be used in upcoming Persona games. Instead, Wada believes that this tech can be valuable during the early process of producing art. He says that some artists struggle to come up with different concepts for the same idea and that using AI can be a way to generate results faster and take inspiration from them to develop something really new.
Not everyone in the entertainment industry is as positive about AI as the Persona team, though. A few weeks ago, the tabletop RPG publisher Paizo took a stance against AI art, stating that it won’t accept works generated using the technology as part of its official products. It’s a pretty popular opinion in the industry, as the technology is often criticized for its blandness, as well as for using copyrighted material to train its machine learning engines, which could potentially create legal problems down the road.
Source: Persona Central