[Adverblessly]

I can't really speak for other people, but I think the "democratizing creativity" part comes in in places where the specific creative part that the AI replaces is not a core part of the creative experience.

Take a look at Super Auto Pets, a pretty successful and fun auto-battler game. It literally uses a free emoji pack for its core art. It doesn't really matter that they didn't hire an artist for those (though I think they did hire an artist after finding success) since a free emoji pack was enough for the creative product they wanted to create. If they had AI generated emoji instead, it wouldn't have really mattered much for the final result (creatively at least, I assume audiences would respond poorly due to GenAI's reputation). At the same time, the ability to create their product without paying a lot of money for artists was critical to make it in the first place.

This is what it means to me to "democratize creativity", to allow creatives to realize their creative ambitions in an area they are proficient at (e.g. video games) without requiring a lot of creative skill in adjacent areas that aren't critical to the experience they are trying to make.

[creata]

I think there's a reason people would respond more poorly to generated art than to emojis: the contentlessness of emojis is broadly understood. We look at an emoji and we know what it is intended to signify. With "AI" art, there is an ambiguity: which aspects of the artwork are intentional, and which aspects are the creator accepting whatever the "AI" churned out?

If the art isn't critical to the game, then use simple art. It doesn't matter if the simple art is or isn't AI generated, what matters (in my opinion) is that it doesn't lead us into looking for meaning that isn't there.

[BeFlatXIII]

> If the art isn't critical to the game, then use simple art.

However, complex art is needed to fit with genre tropes to attract the expected audience. It's like Apple shoving AI into their products needlessly—not a core part of the experience, but needed so Wall Street doesn't throw a hissy.

> looking for meaning when none is there

Or you generate your own meaning. Art is analysis for the audience.