Client went With AI Anyway (AI Took Our Jobs)

[kat]

Setting aside the "AI debate" for the moment, as a freelancer, when faced with situations where clients present 'AI' references they want to be recreated, be sure they clearly understand the limitations of their expectations, that recreating a 3D models from a 2D image will likely not meet those presumed expectations, because of the format change and differences in the way AI 'visualises' (hallucinates) information its prompted to generate vs. what a human sees and intuits. Be absolutely sure they understand this difference (get it on paper if possible or recorded audio).

For the freelancer tasked with recreating AI generated or prompted content, the primary selling point for working on such projects is NOT accuracy, fidelity, or even realistic representations of reality, it's CONTROL, the ability to finitely tweak a projects properties and parameters without running out of tokens - a subtle turn to the right, the repositioning or brightening of a light - these finite changes are incredibly difficult to 'prompt' into existence because, frankly, AI doesn't understand what they mean - when we look at an image we see form (objects) and meaning, when AI looks at it, it seems pixels and colour information, not the same meaning and form.

AI will out compete in almost all regards but control.

Adjust expectations accordingly.

When I sent the first render during the look development with lighting and materials the reaction I got was like «is this as realistic as we can get this?». I then realized that the AI image wasn't just a reference and a starting point in their mind, but basically the exact end goal (at least subconsciously)...

...After sending my latest proposal I got the reply that the client had chosen to go for the AI generated image instead because of lacking detail and realism. Also because of having to meet the deadline the same evening. [Reddit: "Client went with AI instead"]