Riven co-creator defends his use of AI art: 'Any artist can take a brush and, without thinking, an artist can create slop'

Fangamer's videogame tie-ins have drawn our attention multiple times in the past, from the Stardew Valley boxed edition complete with farm-ownership deed, to the angry psychic squid from Into the Breach in huggable plushie form. They recently released a fancy vinyl edition of the soundtrack to Myst sequel Riven, but this time the response has been divided.

As noticed by multiple commenters in a thread on the Myst subreddit (via Time Extension) the gatefold art by composer Robyn Miller, depicting the mysterious Age 234, has the look of generative AI. Miller replied to confirm he'd used AI tools in the art, but defended his use of them to finalize art he says began with old-fashioned pencil sketches of the concept:

"The tools are advanced enough that, once one has a concept, especially a sketch, arriving at a final image is not so difficult. This involved iteration after more iteration, adjusting small parts of the image, and shifting portions of the image. Even once the final design was complete, I could shift elements such as the angle, type of film that was used, the age of film, film grain, time of day, weather, lens on the camera, camera used, ISO, etc... changing the image slightly each time. It's a process of two steps forward, one step back. Dozens of iterations."

Miller, who co-created both Myst and Riven, also took time to defend himself from accusations of creating "AI slop" specifically, with the bold take that actually it's a lot of the real "slop" out there has nothing to do with generative AI.

"From the beginning of my career," Miller wrote, "I have always been an early adopter of tools. Tools do not make the art. The artist makes the art. Any artist can take a brush and, without thinking, an artist can create slop. In fact, the internet is overwhelmed by endless amounts of ART SLOP. And 3D SLOP. When artists design without intent, or copy other people's styles, or create with any thought or care... the result is slop. And it's everywhere."

If you were still capable of seeing the word "slop" without semantic satiation setting in before you read the paragraph above, I imagine that's changed now. Sorry.

Fangamer responded to Time Extension's initial reporting with this statement: "Our internal policy prohibits art created by generative AI in our products, but it’s one we hadn’t directly addressed with all of our outside artists, especially on products like this one, where development began well before the widespread use of image generation. In this case our role in the soundtrack was limited to layout and production, so we weren’t aware of which tools were used to create the gatefold illustration; anyone who has ordered the soundtrack and is unhappy with the product is welcome to contact our customer service and request a cancellation or return, which we’ll process no-questions-asked. We’ve begun updating our artist and partnership agreements to reflect our AI use policy, so that moving forward we can proactively address it with everyone we work with."