[SOLVED] Promo art for V3.1 Henpocalypse update

[7DaysToDieEnjoyer]

AI is a big issue. However, I don't really see a problem with some simple patch notes image being made by AI. Why waste time creating something like that yourself if AI can do it? What worries me more is where AI is heading. We have known about the idea of AI for a long time it’s no coincidence that the concept existed long before it became part of everyday life. When the internet became widespread and AI started entering our daily lives, people were already familiar with the idea. In a way, the internet helped prepare us for what was coming. If AI had been something completely unknown, we probably would have rejected it. But because the idea was already familiar to us, we accepted it more easily. Older generations may completely reject AI, while younger generations who grow up with AI from childhood will see it as something completely normal. That is a little worrying. They may never realize there was a time when AI didn't exist or understand how people lived before it.

If someone in 2026 believes that the system and big corporations only want what's best for them, then we're in serious trouble. Either way, AI wasn't created for no reason. It may improve our lives in some ways, but it will probably also bring consequences that affect many aspects of our lives, including our privacy.

People often say, "The movies were right," or "The games predicted it." Maybe but it's also worth asking who made those movies and games. These ideas aren't new. People simply started copying them and creating more stories around the same themes. They may be preparing us mentally for what is coming. When you see a robot today, it feels normal because you've already seen that idea many times before, right?

Maybe life was better without AI, but I don't think we have much control over it. If the people in power want to keep developing AI, they'll do it anyway. Maybe we won't end up living in a world like Cyberpunk... but then again, maybe we will.

It's a little unsettling. Recently I watched a video and couldn't tell whether it was AI-generated or real. I also saw that some people are even marrying AI. Honestly, I find that pretty disturbing.

 

[nocube]

AI was used for this update, and for the previous one as well. Not for this exact cover art, but for content inside the game itself.
Game mode icons for 3.0, now new foods and descriptions for 3.1.



And before someone tells me that the developers don't use AI at all, remember these pics from their official social media posts

 

[Riamus]

AI was used for this update, and for the previous one as well. Not for this exact cover art, but for content inside the game itself.
Game mode icons for 3.0, now new foods and descriptions for 3.1.

View attachment 40139

And before someone tells me that the developers don't use AI at all, remember these pics from their official social media posts

View attachment 40140 View attachment 40141

*sigh* Assumptions of AI again? What is wrong with the descriptions? They fit TFP's form of humor. There's nothing wrong with them or anything that sounds like it's AI. The images for the food look fine.

 

[murky water]

*sigh* Assumptions of AI again? What is wrong with the descriptions? They fit TFP's form of humor. There's nothing wrong with them or anything that sounds like it's AI. The images for the food look fine.

eeeeeh, i can see what he's saying about the icons and food tho' the font style is rendered differently in all three icons despite using the same font for two of them(heavy arc no embossing, askew angle heavy embossing, arc but less substantial with a bit of a skew mild embossing + slump at the end using a different font), the shading is incredibly incorrect in the first two(if the light is behind you that is not where the shadows would be located and if your leg is against something with no lighting there should not be bright light reflecting off of said leg especially when that lighting is not present on parts of the bike and helmet that SHOULD be getting that high bright sheen of blue) and the big-heads have incorrect clothing for the characters they are supposed to represent on top of being a fairly different style of art from the other two(mainly it is not pixel art at all) while the box of wings have a sauce container pushing through the wall of the box it is in and the soup has several whole complete fried chicken parts and hunks of corn implying the bowl is at least the size of a salad bowl not a soup bowl(also why is there a whole chicken leg in soup?? you supposed to fish it out or are you just supposed to chomp down on that bone?). i'd say the writing is on-par with their usual but given that the team has indeed used ai in the past i could not 100% there was not an ai-assist here. would i argue this as 100% ai? no. not at all, but could you convince me the bus with chibi-rekt and the first two food items are at least partially if not fully ai? pretty easily. i might even conceede the motercycle one since the skill is too high for such newbie mistakes but you can certainly see something is weird even if it is also fairly apperent that the details in places require a human touch in some part of the process to be that accurate to the game

 

[murky water]

Ouch.

When I started in IT decades ago, we would say our programs empowered employees to do more, and that was true for quite a while. We're somewhere around an inflection point where that changed, and I think it is behind us by maybe a decade. Now it seems more obvious to me the system we engineer do displace people. It was more true in manufacturing and likely true in that sector before I observed it.

Around here, I have friends who don't visit the automated check-out line at Kroger and Walmart because they say it is costing the person at the register and the baggers their jobs. I look at the automation and think I could have been part of that team. If folks don't want automation, then I'm out of a job.

I don't know how we get society to jump from today to Star Trek, or better yet, Wall-E.

eeeeh, there are different types of ai, the stuff from the 2000's is very different from the stuff now which was different from the stuff in the 80's. i am a-ok with in-house procedural ai and ai-assistants pulling from pre-chosen trees hand-typed by an individual or a team. they can be annoying but their harm is outweighed by their use. my problem is generative ai. that stuff is....all of the ick. even the otherwise banal stuff like translators are dodgy and can come with some distinctly unpleasant issues because they lack the human oversight nessisary to function with minimal error and sometimes still require human operators to fix the worst of the mistakes while also still sending out a dodgy product lacking in proper oversight.

 

[nocube]

*sigh* Assumptions of AI again? What is wrong with the descriptions? They fit TFP's form of humor. There's nothing wrong with them or anything that sounds like it's AI. The images for the food look fine.

You made my day, man

eeeeeh, i can see what he's saying about the icons and food tho' the font style is rendered differently in all three icons despite using the same font for two of them(heavy arc no embossing, askew angle heavy embossing, arc but less substantial with a bit of a skew mild embossing + slump at the end using a different font), the shading is incredibly incorrect in the first two(if the light is behind you that is not where the shadows would be located and if your leg is against something with no lighting there should not be bright light reflecting off of said leg especially when that lighting is not present on parts of the bike and helmet that SHOULD be getting that high bright sheen of blue) and the big-heads have incorrect clothing for the characters they are supposed to represent on top of being a fairly different style of art from the other two(mainly it is not pixel art at all) while the box of wings have a sauce container pushing through the wall of the box it is in and the soup has several whole complete fried chicken parts and hunks of corn implying the bowl is at least the size of a salad bowl not a soup bowl(also why is there a whole chicken leg in soup?? you supposed to fish it out or are you just supposed to chomp down on that bone?). i'd say the writing is on-par with their usual but given that the team has indeed used ai in the past i could not 100% there was not an ai-assist here. would i argue this as 100% ai? no. not at all, but could you convince me the bus with chibi-rekt and the first two food items are at least partially if not fully ai? pretty easily. i might even conceede the motercycle one since the skill is too high for such newbie mistakes but you can certainly see something is weird even if it is also fairly apperent that the details in places require a human touch in some part of the process to be that accurate to the game

Without even going into much detail, there are some extremely obvious & undeniable signs of AI usage here: the entire zombie and its clothing in the Scavenger image, the motorcycle's wheel and mechanical parts, and the entire chibi image (from characters to bg clouds). The food icons also have traces of illogical discoloration, even a bit of the so-called "p i ss filter," and highly noticeable areas with inconsistent contrast that look completely different from the pale 3D renders and hand-drawn icons already present in the game. Grandpa's chicken wings even have double-screw at the bottom right corner brace. Item descriptions follow the very basic structure of short descriptions generated by ChatGPT, including the slighlty unnatural catchphrase/joke at the end.

 

[Stallionsden]

everyone is an expert lol.

 

[murky water]

You made my day, man



Without even going into much detail, there are some extremely obvious & undeniable signs of AI usage here: the entire zombie and its clothing in the Scavenger image, the motorcycle's wheel and mechanical parts, and the entire chibi image (from characters to bg clouds). The food icons also have traces of illogical discoloration, even a bit of the so-called "p i ss filter," and highly noticeable areas with inconsistent contrast that look completely different from the pale 3D renders and hand-drawn icons already present in the game. Grandpa's chicken wings even have double-screw at the bottom right corner brace.

while a lot of that can be a sign of ai-generated images a lot of that is also a sign of a ■■■■e artist x''D please never ask to see my attempts at mechanical art from 20 years ago. i've actually drawn much worse bikes than that hahaha. i more or less just picked out things that a sighted artist would notice and would be picked out for a second pass over by an art director

 

[nocube]

while a lot of that an be a sign of ai a lot of that is also a sign of a ■■■■e artist x''D please never ask to see my attempts at mechanical art from 20 years ago. i've actually drawn much worse bikes than that hahaha

Btw many of these things would be difficult to replicate even for a skilled artist. I think you'd actually have to specifically practice reproducing the same kinds of mistakes that AI makes to make it look like on the picture lol

 

[murky water]

Btw many of these things would be difficult to replicate even for a skilled artist. I think you'd actually have to specifically practice reproducing the same kinds of mistakes that AI makes to make it look like on the picture lol

hm, i see where you are coming from but i think it is more the reverse; a skilled artist would have unlearned these mistakes in the course of improving. i could imagine someone who is just starting out to make a few of these mistakes either rarely or so consistently that they'd be part of that artist's tell but someone at my level of skill would not be making so many of these mistakes let alone so inconsistently in every image. my skill is lower than what would be required to make the middle image so i can assure you the parts of bike one that look really nice are above what i could personally do but the mistakes are so novice that i look at them and i struggle to decide if this is assisted. i think i will agree with you thoguh that this is not completely original even if i do think a human hand touched it at least a little

as for the first one i grew up with 80's and 90's comics. liefeld has forever ruined my ability to tell if that style is ai or just trash x'''D the shirt that is also ribs is literally the broken background noise of my childhood. i could not say if it is ai, assisted or original

 

[Double G]

The current generation of kids have already accepted AI.

It's the kids that don't like AI. Old people don't even know the difference.

The biggest problem I have with this picture is it looks nothing like the game. Who's the chicken man? Will I be able to play as the chicken man? If so, could I peck zombies to death with my beak?

I hate it when promotional images don't look like the product.

 

[FramFramson]

This is one of the big things I hate about AI - it's become so prevalent that everyone just assumes everything is AI now.

Exactly. Everyone jumping at shadows.

 

[Crater Creator]

The biggest problem I have with this picture is it looks nothing like the game. Who's the chicken man? Will I be able to play as the chicken man? If so, could I peck zombies to death with my beak?

Pretty sure it’s related to this.

The Big Beak cosmetic outfit, originally worn by Nana’s Famous Chicken Mascot, is coming with the Stable release. Cluck and load. ■■■■-a-Doodle Doom.

 

[meganoth]

It's the kids that don't like AI. Old people don't even know the difference.

I can't claim to really know the current kid culture on the whole so I can't really argue that point with hard facts. But would 10 year olds really be AI experts with a strong opinion against it? I highly doubt it. Sure, there will be lots of young people in the rebellious phase of adolescence on a war path. The younger kids who are already glued to smartphones might not have that drive.

Anyway, whatever AI brings, it is too disruptive to go away. As a comparison: The gamer community could not prevent microtransactions, they could only limit the worst form, pay-to-win, to a minority of games (and to china ;-) ). Nobody could stop the cloud even though there are clear disadvantages to it. AI won't be different.

 

[zztong]

AI was used for this update, and for the previous one as well. Not for this exact cover art, but for content inside the game itself.
Game mode icons for 3.0, now new foods and descriptions for 3.1.

Once again, I cannot tell. The trouble I have is the art style doesn't let me compare it to something.

The "Scavenger", "Nomad", etc. do seem like things I have had AI produce, so if this were some kind of blind test where we try to pick which is AI and which is Human, I would pick those, but I can't be certain. I wouldn't pick the food icons as AI, but it is in the realm of possibilities.

I'm assuming you're expressing an opinion, or do you have proof?

And before someone tells me that the developers don't use AI at all, remember these pics from their official social media posts

The one on the left is different from what I've seen before from them and I could see using AI for a social media post, depending on what the post was about. The one on the right looks to me like concept art for the original plague spitter that was human made.

The realistic six-finger lady in the family portrait seems like AI to me. Though there are people in real life with six fingers. Still, I think it is a stretch to think a human artist said to themselves "this lady will be have a condition called polydactyly."

*sigh* Assumptions of AI again? What is wrong with the descriptions? They fit TFP's form of humor. There's nothing wrong with them or anything that sounds like it's AI. The images for the food look fine.

I think this too in the realm of possibilities.

everyone is an expert lol.

Speaking for myself, I'm working hard not to show myself as an expert, despite having some experiences with AI. When it comes to art, I worry about becoming the living embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Here's an interesting site when you face 50 pictures and have to determine which is AI and which is Human. I went through it quickly (about 2 minutes) in "Auto-Advance" mode and went with my first impression, rather than dwelling on details, mostly because I was in a hurry. I might have done better if I really pondered each piece...

You got 28 right out of 50. That's 56%, which puts you at the 34th percentile of the 11,061 people who took the test.

AI Art Turing Test

ai-art-turing-test.com

 

[zztong]

I thought I would add my experiences attempting to detect AI in student work.

AI detector software isn't reliable. We know this from multiple studies. My own writing gets flagged as AI generated. One of my colleagues retired because he loved the written word and couldn't handle the notion that he couldn't spot the difference. He clung to AI detector software until it was proven ineffective. We miss him, because his classes greatly improved our student's writing.

Students often rely on easy sources, such as web searches. Web searches are integrating AI responses. They find the information they want and restate it, but are influenced by what they read. In some ways, they're learning to write from AI, just as people learn to write based on what they read.

Students will use AI to check their grammar and spelling, then take AI's suggestions.

If I make an accusation of AI usage, I have to have proof as I can end up in an official dispute process. I cannot go there with an impression or a suspicion. I can, instead, talk to the student about the work and ask questions. When I ask about the process used to complete an assignment, some will show me their use of AI. Often it isn't "generate, copy, paste." These are in-major upper level classes and they want to know the material. They fear entering industry and not knowing anything. The students who are not in the major and in lower level classes who are more likely to take the easy route.

Things that have worked as proof...

Asking for specific references. AI has often invented these, but it is getting better.

Asking questions about subjects with lots of misinformation or where there is a significant amount of out-of-date information. AI often had read conflicting information and sometimes sneaks in out-of-date answers.

Oh, then there's the more-integrated AI tools. For instance, don't use Claude in the browser. Use the native client for your OS. Now Claude can both discuss what you're working on and actively collaborate with you. I can have Claude make changes to local files and files on my Google Drive. I can give it a document, ask it to critique it, and then apply its suggestions. We've had Claude work in a virtual lab and build networks of virtual machines, then launch that network and configure some of the hosts to do something.

 

[meganoth]

AI detector software isn't reliable. We know this from multiple studies. My own writing gets flagged as AI generated.

I've read enough Science Fiction to be sure that you actually are an infiltrator AI that hasn't realized yet that it is an AI.

 

[zztong]

I've read enough Science Fiction to be sure that you actually are an infiltrator AI that hasn't realized yet that it is an AI.

Identity compromised. Destruction mode activated.

 

[Double G]

I can't claim to really know the current kid culture on the whole so I can't really argue that point with hard facts. But would 10 year olds really be AI experts with a strong opinion against it?

10 years old? Those are babies. I'm an old man. 18-25 are kids to me.
Who cares what 10 year olds think?