New developments in generative artificial intelligence (AI) is having a detrimental impact on the Chinese games industry.

That's according to a new report from Rest of World – as spotted by Game Developer – which says that since the start of this year, advances in AI programs like DALL-E 2, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion have seen job opportunities for illustrators disappear.

One artist, Amber Yu, says that while she used to be hired to create posters to promote games on social media – a job she made good money with – she is now being contracted to correct artwork generated by AI for a tenth of what she used to be able to charge.

Other artists report that illustrators have been laid off from developers. One illustrator, Xu Yingying, who works at an independent art studio says that five of the 15 strong illustration team has been let go.

“AI is developing at a speed way beyond our imagination,” Yingying said.

She continued: “Two people could potentially do the work that used to be done by 10.”

Though this report is concerned with China, there are anxieties the world over as to how artificial intelligence is going to be applied in game development.