@Taril Concept art does indeed eventually turn (or mostly turn) into the finished product. Just because it is iterative does not mean it does not end up picking a direction. The BG3 artbook has many examples of this. It is not always 1:1 as technical limitations pop up, but, like I said: If the root of your visual direction has the centrist approach AI takes, that's not good at all for the final product's artistic vision.
As an owner of many artbooks and a watcher of many artists...
I stand by my comment that most concept art does not turn into a final product.
If BG3's artbook has many examples of concept art being directly turned into finished products, then that is an exception (Or it features more early iterations of final art than actual concept stage ideas)
From my experience with the many iterations of concept art, rarely does it directly become a final product and even when it does, it's never an amalgamation of ALL concepts
As for the artists, if I am allowed an argument from authority fallacy: as an artist myself, and knowing the general stance of other artists (and former concept artists that worked at Larian that have popped up after this reveal), this is not helping them. They generally don't like working with it.
That may be the case. But it doesn't mean that AI generated art is being used as a final product, nor does it mean that the ethical use of Gen AI isn't focused on supporting artists by means of allowing them to generate concept art more quickly.
