itch.io

Here, you have a company building a software using source material it has not paid for and selling it to you.

So your argument would fall flat against all models that use licensed source material. And against ai material that was not purchased. You know you can download a model and create stuff on your home pc? I tried it once. That consumes less power than me playing a game.

In order to build the software in question, companies needs a country level of energy (and water)

Uhm. Nope. What really needs country level of energy is crypto currency. Datacenters just meet the demand of all the internet and stuff. Around 2% of global energy was used on that even before AI. Hating on datacenter energy consumption also means, you should not use google maps to navigate. Or browse on Itch, for that matter. Or watching Netflix and Co.

I really wonder why people now use all these arguments against the evil ai, but I never noticed the same outcry against crypto. And crypto is many times worse in that regard.

Anyway, depending on the use case, a search query to an ai system might even be more efficient than using the same quere several times on a normal internet search till you find what you are looking for. And if it would be more costly but no one would pay for it, it will dwindle down.

But we are actually speaking about ai in games, are we not. Do you think the devs struggling with budget use a lot of money on AI art? If they had that kind of money, they could easily pay real artists. You can download an ai system and use it on your own pc. Not all those systems are from the evil big tech companies. Some are open source.

Making games using those tools devalue the craft of making games

So my question to you too:

How are your thoughts about using a game engine?

Juding from your post, you might consider using a game engine as devaluing the craft. There be amateurs churning out a "game" by clicking some stuff together and call themselves developers, after all.