Idk about artists, but programmers you're gonna hire in 2026 are almost all gonna Use AI. Only programmers I know that don't use AI are millennial indie developers or interns at corpos who actually wanna learn stuff.

I myself was against AI, but this is what I saw with my own eyes. If it's a corporation, it's 99℅ using generative AI for coding. Still am, but this is the reality.

Speaking anecdotally based on my conversations with SO who is a native Japanese speaker and very glued into internet culture. She's more liberal than most though.

It's not entirely true that AI is more popular in Japan. In fact, many creatives feel that the practice is in violation of Japan's much more strict copyright policies (compared to the US) and are seeking government action (which, so far, they are waffling back and forward on based on the week to week dynamics with the US. Weeks where the US footguns itself, they humor it again.) So in some respects, AI is a direct threat to the only power that modern Japan has in the global economy: soft power and intellectual property. They aren't the same Japan as the 80s, even cars aren't doing as well as they used to.

That being said, Japanese cultural dynamics are such that people are much more willing to "put up" with things instead of resistance. This creates the appearance of what people think is complete acceptance, but it's generally more complicated than that socially speaking. It's more a complacency to fall in line with how their employers or how their government feels about AI.

Government action toward AI is basically inexistent in most parts of the world right now, but I understand that a big part of this is US capitulation since the entire US economy is propped up by AI hype. Japan, much like Europe in the Ukraine situation, is unfortunately very dependent on the United States now for Oil due to the Strait of Hormuz closure and are not yet willing to do provocative action against US companies who are in definite blatant infringement of Japanese copyright laws. This has ruffled feathers of some activist politicians, but unfortunately Japan is very much losing it's own battle to the far right atm due to xenophobic spread of misinformation from AI generated anti foreigner rhetoric.

That's my understanding of the situation. And again, this is second hand and purely anecdotal discussion, but I think it's a bit more complicated than acceptance of generative AI and more a commentary on how acceptance works in Japan in the first place.

how is your !nintendo@lemmy.world crusade going🤣

Why not footcrafted? Just joking. Although there was some anime I watched, that if I had to take a shot of vodka every time it panned to feet, I would pass out drunk. I think there was seven in one episode. I was thinking do you guys want to tell the story or... draw feet?

AAA/corporate gaming, and has been for a very long time. They’re just finding new ways to push shovelware.

Anime is the country music of animation.

There's some good stuff out there but it's become so homogenized, the average country song sounds exactly like every other country song.

We're working on automating the labor too. Turns out art was just easier.

Hold your horses, making by hand another 1000 cheap ugly stock waifu gacha images is not art. It is and was slop.

Most j-games that have ads that reach me were slop since forever. Same story, same looking girls, same gameplay.

I mean, that makes perfect sense. Game development is mostly programming, so if you're an aspiring game developer these are probably inconvenient bits you want to get out of the way rather than what you're there for.

Yeah. That the whole idea behind the so called AI thing.

Where Winds Meet is a Chinese free-to-play RPG that was briefly popular earlier this year. The devs actually considered it a selling point that NPCs and sidequests were entirely LLM-driven. Look up a video if you want to see some of the most awkward and cringe-inducing dialog this side of Soulstorm.

i can barely find a gaming blog these days that aren't: written by AI, clickbait, or videos (also AI)

journalism is a lost art

Most national medias are running AI services to translate "important" international stories.

I wish they'd spend less time running international stories (I know it's for the boomers incapable of reading English) and more time on doing proper journalism

Is really sad

There's a big difference between what's happening in the commercial world and art circles. I can't speak for food but with regards to the topic here, Japan has a huge creator market and that market responds very differently. A year back, their biggest creator fair had a few "artists" selling AI "art" but essentially no one was interested and they hardly sold anything while others had sprawling queues. This year there was pretty much 0 as a result.

Having lived in Japan for over a decade, I think the west generally over-elevates/-mystifies Japan. Capitalists gonna capitalist. They can do more work with fewer people and make more money. Most Japanese consumers also do not care at all about generative AI. It's in the train stations, city offices, and everywhere else as a part of the normal.

Japanese creatives are now heavily split on LLMs. What with half taken to defend their work with watermarks and proofs of timelapses and manual processes, and there's fierce loyalty for Miyazaki et. al. While others are either playing with dozens of LLMs to produce even animations, churning out thirst traps by the dozen, and still others "enhancing" game screenshots of their player characters in poses and skimpy clothing.

Maybe they have high standards for what they generate, use the models as "fillers" or "finishers" (broadly adding details or patterns to a base sketch, then touching up on any errors or ungeneratable details), or rely on models they've vetted for consistent quality? I doubt they're all using a piss filter chatgpt text to image gen.

Yeah, it does seem inconsistent with the view that anything AI touches must obviously look awful.

Have you considered that wherever you're from is the weird place? They are much more optimistic about AI in Asia.

you might spend a small fortune on a couple of strawberries

Isn't that mostly because their farms are so far behind and producing such low volumes that they can only survive with artisanal hand picked/whatever products

Like every region, there's developers who love throwing up asset flips, and there's developers who make stuff out of passion.

I remember one of the favorite comparisons of AI generated art I saw in a video on the subject is as an expensive replacement for stock footage (and in game development I guess it would be stock assets).