so, background, I’m currently workshopping a Disco Elysium/Touhou Project fusion fanfic (Disco concept, Gensokyo setting) and, since I already pay for NovelAI for recreational purposes, I figured I’d generate some character/skill portraits for it to accentuate the presentation of it.
Here's some of the better ones as of yet, alongside the one in the thumbnail.
However, I am conflicted on actually using them.
I figured I’d outsource the question because I’ve been thinking about it for a week and am no closer to resolving the internal contradiction. Here’s what I’ve been thinking thus far:
Concerns: I have moral concerns about the scraping and the ‘ask-for-forgiveness-not-permission’ philosophy that is central to these major generative models. I also think, in the context of it’s use within the hands of the bourgeoisie, AI is used as a tool of displacement and discipline. I also know that there is generally a negative perception of people who use AI image generation, for mostly valid reasons as most self-proclaimed ‘AI artists’ are coomers/techbros who make it a mission to discredit and disparage human artists. Even though I don’t fall into this category, I’m worried that I’d open up a vector of harassment where there otherwise wouldn’t be one if I include them, and I don’t want to deal with that.
Benefits: It adds to the vibes of the fic, and I think there’s a tangible enhancement with adding visuals to it. I also like what I’ve output so far.
Caveats: I don’t plan to make money off of this. I don’t have the disposable income to commission portraits for what ultimately is a fanwork that I don’t plan to profit off of and don’t have enough investment in to sink money into. The concerns are specifically what are holding me back in adding them, because it would be nice to add a visual component.
I just wanted to get a vibe check on here for this use case. Want to see if it will help me resolve the internal contradiction I’ve tangled myself in 
edit: I’ll err on the side of caution and drop the visual aspect of it, thanks for the feedback
That money could be spent on a human artist to make the art. They could also make it look consistent, whereas the AI stuff you show has an inconsistent style. Some stuff for example has distinct “line-art” whereas some relies entirely on color and shading to indicate contours and delineations, although on your end you could use the difference selectively to set a mood and make it seem deliberate (like line-art style normally, switching to color-and-shadow for emotionally heavy scenes, particular characters that carry a special significance, etc.).
Also there was a post here a while back about the energy cost of generating these AI images, it’s apparently an average of “1 smartphone charge” per go: https://hexbear.net/post/1274630
I don’t know how that compares to the energy used by an artist making a bunch of stuff on their computer over several hours / days, so that might not be much of a point, but it’s something to consider.
Also, I’m not the only person who just won’t fuck with a project that they know to have AI-generated content. Keep that in mind as far as how much / what kind of audience you want your fan-project to have.
keep in mind that 11 Wh is basically a rounding error, as far as amounts of power go. Equivalent to 40 seconds of a microwave, 8 minutes of a burning tealight, or 8 cents on my power bill ($0.07/kWh). Likely similar order of magnitude to digital artist using a lower-power device for hours. Worth considering when thinking about large policy but not in assessing individual actions.
sorry i’m unable to resist plugging these things into Wolfram
edit: hey I don’t like this upvote ratio. This isn’t meant to say that OP should use AI art or even as a substantial response to GnastyGnuts, per-image energy is the least important part of this convo
OP already said that there is no budget to pay an artist to draw all the portraits. The choice isn’t between generative AI or human artist, the choice is between generative AI or nothing.
NovelAI starts at $10 per month, while a human artist would charge hundreds of dollars for all the portraits. There is no budget for that, so it was never an option in the first place.