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Persona Producer Says AI Art Could Be "Very Useful"

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Last year, High on Life came under fire for using AI art (in particular, the controversial Midjourney) to add "finishing touches", yet despite the backlash, Persona producer Kazuhisa Wada is still interested in pursuing it as an option with the art team.

"The progress of AI has been quite intriguing," Wada said (as reported by Persona Central). "I think the Technology behind AI illustrations will be very useful in the future. For example, when coming up with rough ideas, an AI can continuously output one idea after another, something that a single artist might struggle with.

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"So I think for early concept and idea formation, we could use AI right away. Our art team has been talking about wanting to implement AI."

A close-up of Joker from Persona 5 Royal against a cityscape backdrop.

Based on Wada's comments, it seems as though the Persona team would use AI art in a limited fashion, for concept art and ideas rather than the actual Games themselves. However, there are still ethical concerns.

AI art usually draws from a pool of unlicensed, copyrighted art, taken without permission. It then compiles this data to create its 'own' work, though this work is an amalgamation of stolen material.

If concepts are created with AI art, Persona may inadvertently source other people's work without their permission and without paying them, and these concepts could still be used as the basis for actual models and designs in-Game. This is where AI art becomes immoral, as rather than paying artists for their work, it goes around them to steal their art and recycle it.

Right now, Wada is simply talking about a possibility and an interest, one he claims is shared by the art team, so it's unclear if Persona 6 or any spin-offs, such as the upcoming mobile Game Phantom X, will utilise AI art in any way. Regardless, given the backlash to AI art in recent months, with the aforementioned High on Life and Corridor Crew's 'anime' video, it's unlikely that such methods would go down well.

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