‘Shin Megami Tensei’ Series Artist Trains AI Model On His Work For Deck Builder ‘Tsukuyomi: The Divine Hunter’ – Results Range From Hilarious To Potentially Copyright Infringing
In an excellent example of how AI-generated content is not yet a suitable replacement for human talent, iconic Shin Megami Tensei franchise artist Kazuma Kaneko has contributed his talents to Tsukuyomi: The Divine Hunter, a deck-building game that uses a machine model trained on his own works to generate unique cards based on player choices – but rather than being perfect emulations of his style, the results are instead a mix of ‘hilarious mash-ups of various body parts’ and ‘David Cronenberg body horror’.
Developed by Japanese studio COLOPL, who in addition to producing their own mobile titles like Alice Gear Aegis and NEKO GOLF -Anime GOLF- also oversee Hunter X Hunter: Nen x Impact developer Eighting Games and Steins;Gate heralds Mages (formerly 5pb), Tsukuyomi: The Divine Hunter‘s deck building mechanic is set against a SMT-style dungeon crawler which tasks players with ascending a mysterious Tokyo skyscraper filled with dangerous monsters, all in service of killing a target known simply as Tsukuyomi.
In service of improving their deck, players generate new cards by sacrificing ones they already own, each new addition to their collection featuring a completely unique piece of artwork as generated by the game’s own ‘AI Kaneko’, as trained on the eponymous artist’s style under his oversight.
(And though said cards can be lost when defeated, these generated creations will not be lost forever, as after being created they can then be found at random in the player’s own game.)
Admittedly an ambitious gameplay system, Tsukuyomi: The Divine Hunter‘s AI ambitions are unfortunately hurt by the fact that they are 100% machine made and thus lack, as recently spoken on by Level-5 President and CEO Akihiro Hino, a human’s “aesthetic eye”.
As such, many cards, as shared by players on social media, are absolutely bizarre – which is arguably fitting for Kaneko’s aesthetic, but we digress – and also unintentionally amusing.
For some examples, look at Steam user Ojapyon‘s ‘angel knight playing an impossibly 2-and-a-half-necked guitar’:
Twitter user @ScruntMaxxing’s Chaos, itself a winged, headless, and six-legged mass of fur:
Or @IMAJINsmt’s ‘Indian nurse woman with a literal hourglass for genitalia’:
There also exists the possibility for cards to be just uninteresting, ugly, or straight-up unsettling, such as Steam user h-z-r’s Sarasvati, which simply depicts a regular-looking Middle Eastern woman playing a bizarre harp-saxophone contraption:
Or Twitter user @16DDDDDDDDDDDDD’s Dagda, an apparent Marijuana-inspired deity sporting red-hair, yellow-skin, and a combination throne-slash-pot of gold:
However, perhaps most entertainingly – or if you’re COLOPL’s legal team, potentially worrying – AI Kaneko is also capable of creating ‘non-union‘ depictions of established characters from existing IP, including Elsa from Frozen:
And an apparent Sinestro Corps version of Batman and Superman’s ‘Green Lantern Fusion’ form, as seen in Batman/Superman: World’s Finest Vol. 1 #4, rocking a near-exact recreation of Big Blue’s iconic emblem:
As for Kaneko’s own thoughts on the work produced his AI counterpart, in a recent interview with Japanese video game news outlet Game Spark, Kaneko asserted, “We can manage to draw a humanoid character, but it is difficult to draw a picture of a creature that does not exist in reality, such as a creature with two heads.”
“When I manage to output a picture that looks like it, I try to make it closer to the picture I want by merging multiple pictures together,” added the Shin Megami Tensei mainstay, proceeding to joke, “To be honest, it would be faster if I drew the picture myself from start to finish.”
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