Can artificial intelligence (AI) be used to generate 2D game art? After struggling to create quality 2D art for a small space shooter project in Godot 4, I take my chances with Artistic ALgorithm or AAL 9000 (DALL-E 2) to help me create some quick 2D game art to plug into my game.

Will AAL 9000 put game artists out of a job and help me develop an awesome game with no artistic help on my part?

**All game assets were actually created with DALL-E 2 by OpenAI and Midjourney.

Artificial Intelligence?

Artifical intelligence is a weird thing. We use computers for a lot of different things within game development. Even just a basic noise generation algorithm can save a lot of time that might be better spent on other aspects of your game. Cue all of the recent AI additions to the game developer’s toolbox. Tools like ChatGPT, DALL-E 2, Midjourney promise amazing results with low effort and they can be very enticing to fresh game developers looking to cut some creative corners. But does it work?

Your New Assistant Graphic Designer

I took AI image generator DALL-E 2 for a spin while creating a basic 2D top down shooter prototype in the Godot Engine. As part of the test, every art asset would be created by DALL-E 2, and the results were…..interesting….

Using a basic text prompt, DALL-E 2 can take keywords like “pixelated”, “2D”, “top-down” and can create 1:1 graphics based on the prompt.

The images still need considerable work, meaning these will not simply replace a graphic artist or complete the job for you entirely. But what DALL-E 2 and other AI image generators like it CAN do is act like a graphical assistant…something to get the ball rolling or suggest ideas that you, as the true artist for your game, can then take a run with. Check out my video exploring the use of AI art and see what can and can’t be done in the new age of AI-everything.