Although I don't see AI in game art becoming accepted by the wider public any time soon, and definitely not by the indie crowd.
I've also been thinking about this for animation. I foresee cheap limited animation (sliding layers, only mouth moving, etc) being replaced by incoherent un-/barely edited AI output instead.
All of them will. It can save nearly 100% of costs for art production. Nobody can afford not to use it, unless they aren’t developing the game to make a profit.
> Although I don't see AI in game art becoming accepted by the wider public any time soon
It’s already being used everywhere without “the wider public” even noticing. Same in professional film and TV productions. It doesn’t look AI generated because they don’t just run Stable Diffusion and call it a day, but the reductions in labor costs are still immense even with the post-processing that’s currently still required to match AAA quality.
This is not correct. Your profit doesn't have to be relative to what another company makes. It would only be affected if games passed the savings on to the customers. You make more profit if you do use it potentially but it doesn't mean you don't make profit if you choose to go the traditional route.
Doesn't your lot ever get tired of the intellectually lazy, rubbish absolutisms you peddle? Same goes for the projections; just because you slop it, doesn't mean everyone will.
The games market has a massive oversupply. It's not enough to just "make a game", you have to make a good one. That is to say, better than all the other things your audience could be playing. Cheaping out is literally not an option. You can cheap out in one area to spend more effort in another area, but you can't just say "this is cheaper therefore it will be the default" because the default isn't good enough. Most games fail