I don’t consider myself a sceptical person. I don’t trust easily either. And I am certainly not naïve. When I meet somebody or talk to someone I barely know, I generally assume they are telling the truth — more or less. I never felt completely taken advantage of, although there were people in my life who at one point tried to deceive me or hide their true intentions.

A.I. has been around for some time now. It’s a great tool. It will change most aspects of our lives for better or worse, depending on how we tame it. I don’t believe in either a dystopian or utopian future. I believe the future will be average. You’ll win some, you’ll lose some.

The reaction to A.I. from people around me confuses me for the most part. “How do you know that A.I. won’t lie to you?” My usual reply is, “How do I know you didn’t lie to me yesterday?” I mean, it’s not even a matter of trust. It’s about using your brain and making an educated estimation based on the information you are given. Does it sound like bullshit? How does it match the knowledge I already have?

When it comes to art — any kind of art — I understand the worries and partially the anger and reasonable fear of what A.I. can do or might replace. Expressing yourself through art is something very personal, something skilful, something emotional — something we do not connect to machines.

In my profession, I work with authors, writers of all kinds, actors, and other artists who perform in many ways on a stage. I agree that nothing A.I. does can replace their talents or their work. I don’t consider A.I. an artistic entity. I rather think of it as a tool, much like a paintbrush or a palette knife. It helps me bring paint onto the canvas. I could do it with my bare fingers, too. It’s a matter of what I want to achieve.

When I decided to make a visual novel, I was mostly interested in the writing process and less fascinated by creating backgrounds or character sprites. I think of a visual novel as an enhanced book: it’s less elaborate than a novel, but more eloquent than a comic.

I am not a particularly skilled painter or sketch artist, although I had Fine Arts as well as Music as majors in school. I realised that I had to focus to be successful. I had to focus on writing a strong storyline. Implementing computer-generated art is, for now, the best solution to achieve this goal.

Using A.I. for my part is not an undermining of the skills of other creators. I don’t claim to be them, and I don’t claim to have their talents. I’m a fair writer, though. This is just me using my digital palette knife to tell a story. I hope you like it.

In an upcoming post, I will tell you more about the specific style, that I trained A.I. to produce, to help me making Terdo and where I got my inspiration from.