Finally Used AI! …and got a mixed response

I have finally given into Thomas’s love of AI…😂

My best friend and I recently were toying around with Copilot and used it to generate a character idea I’d had in my head, but the outfit was gonna be so complex I didn’t know how to draw it. The things Copilot generated weren’t what I had in mind exactly… BUT IT WAS SO COOL!! The more lore Copilot generated about these characters, an idea of my own came bubbling up, and so I tweaked the characters’ designs and used what Copilot gave me as a starting point for a brand new story idea (the majority of which I will be the brains behind, not AI. AI, as I said, helps with the basic starting points for this one project).

I mentioned this to a different author/creative online group, one which does not talk about AI as often as here on Author Media. Agreeing that AI is a touchy subject for some, I asked if anybody had mixed feelings like I previously did. And they DID. A few people liked how I was using AI, but the rest who commented were disappointed in me for not using my full creativity, and some were even a bit startled by the use of AI. (They did make some very valid points about sourcing, and I went through to make sure nothing about my characters was too similar to anything others had already created online.)

Since this is a more AI-friendly circle, I wanted to ask for y’all’s opinions on using AI as a simple starting point for new stories and/or characters.

I’m going to continue forward with this story either way (I’m creating far more of this new world than AI is). I will say, Thomas’s points about how the printing press was once frowned upon like AI made me go, “Oh… all right, then.”🤣

Also here’s an art piece I did of these AI generated characters after I tweaked their designs. ^^