A hot potato: In a story that will no doubt ignite more passionate debate about AI art and whether those who make a living from creating it can be considered artists, the developer of a digital card trading game said it pays someone the equivalent of $1,500 per hour to make AI images.

The official Champions of Otherworldly Magic Twitter/X account posted a message that reads: "We pay our AI artist 15,000 USD per month for exactly 10 hours of work."

The company justifies this amount because the creator makes hundreds of "amazing" images "astronomically faster" than any team of traditional artists.

"His art is 100% AI generated, yet it has no extra fingers, no generic designs, no mistakes... It has consistent evolutions, skins, alt art styles - literally no one is on his level," it continues.

Champions TCG co-founder and CEO Miles Malec told PC Gamer that the anonymous creator, who has 15 years of digital art experience and doesn't use social media, made over 1,000 images with generative AI over the course of six months, and was paid $15,000 each month.

Worth $90,000?

Malec said that getting the same amount of work from a team of traditional artists would have taken a lot more money and time. "The guy's a pro and he charges what he's worth. We are well connected in the space and no one comes close to the quality he delivers," he said. The CEO also confirmed that the images aren't completely AI generated as they're edited and filtered to check for errors.

It might not surprise you to learn that Champions cards are NFTs that can be bought and sold for crypto. The developer also sells gems for actual cash that can be traded for card packs. In one of the many responses to the X post stating that nobody is going to play the game, the company claims that it has made over $510,000 in secondary market revenue.

The cards, which you can see here, really don't look like they are worth $15,000 per month. Most of the backgrounds are very plain and the characters quite generic; I've seen more impressive art in plenty of card-based tabletop and digital games.

Several of the replies claim Champions TCG only made the post for engagement, which it doesn't explicitly deny. Interestingly, the company says it will consider anyone who can match the quality of the AI art for a position as the creator's assistant, paying $5K to $10K per month. Any set of tools or techniques, including hand painting, will be allowed.

There has been plenty of controversy over the use of AI art, from Wizards of the Coast's promo and book material to the Secret Invasion intro. Ultimately, most people still hate anything generated this way, and the company responsible for its use tends to apologize. Nevertheless, AI art keeps finding its way into more games, shows, books, and elsewhere.

What do you call someone who creates AI images?
Artist Prompt engineer