>>108222338The anti-AI-art stigma in Japan is literally like 100x stronger than it is in the West especially if it has anything to do with commercial merchandise/products. Some guy is gonna say they stole his pose etc thus are taking money he should have gotten.
Regardless I have noticed on pixiv that some of the really-good, almost-perfect-accurate genners actually get similar viewcounts and praise as real artists do including lots of Japanese comments. I think many of them are fine with it for making new goon material for their obscure favorite series etc but they will never admit it in public basically. Their public face aka tatemae will excoriate AI up and down but their true self aka honne does appreciate the potential.
They hate seeing a big corpo like Cover cheap out and rip off some amalgam of other artist's works for profit, of which I totally see the point because they absolutely can afford artists and are depriving real people of work just to sling slop and keep all the money. It is literally always a fucking bad sign seeing AI in rich commercial company use. but if it was a matter of making goon material of their deepest desires of RBC and raora independent of Cover and just for the sake of the goon then they might open up.