hey i recently redownloaded choices bc i was missing a few older stories but have no idea about the current state of PB or the fandom. what's changed in the past few years?
I'll be honest lol I haven't opened the app in months, BUT I'm assuming since you said years into been a while for you!
Anywho, I'd say one of the biggest changes in the last few years and been the focus on smut. 90% of the newer books are smut centered, and there's been a gigantic rise in single LI books. As for the fandom, I haven't been on it in a while but thanks for the ask!
What in the AI f*ckery is PB up to again? There is 0 doubt the cover "art" for TDG was largely done with the help of AI tools.
Let's start with Farah. There's a lot of similarities in the hair between the in-game sprite and the cover "art" portrait, so PB probably fed both images and text prompts to the generator. What gives away that it's AI generated though is that part of the hair on the right side is randomly swept back.
Upon initial look Dante looks pretty genuine, a suave Latin-American actor, if not for the t-shirt changing to dress shirt. But if you zoom into the hair, it's definitely an AI generated smudgy mess.
This young nerdy girl with deer-in-the-headlights look and piggy nose is supposed to be our deadpan doctor.
I'm pretty sure I've seen this actress in an early 2000s black comedy movie. The hair color is totally wrong as well.
People have complained for a long time that Choices (East) Asian characters don't look very ...Asian. Probably that's why this generic young K-pop starlet looks nothing like Astoria the influencer lady in TDG.
The "artist" inserting the prompts should have clarified to AI that the COO has no gray hair or goatee. The pattern on his jacket doesn't even match his roleplay costume.
PB just generated a random black guy and copy-pasted the toupée on his head, which is probably one of the only two non-AI generated objects in the cover "art".
She is literally Sarah Hyland!
Again, like with the influencer above, the AI isn't aware that generally Asian men in Choices look big and bulky, along with other western beauty ideals.
Please stop this bullsh*t, @playchoices! AI generated images are not art, it's blatant theft. In order to train their AI tools, companies steal billions of artwork made by hardworking and underpaid artists. I'm certain you wouldn't be happy either if someone used your stories and artwork without your consent for training their AI to then profit from it.
In addition to the amazing artists and writers in our fandom, we have so many other creators who share beautiful works in other mediums like edits and moodboards.
Here are a few that I'm shouting out. I know this is not an exhaustive list. I don't follow a ton of editors, so if you are one and you see this, let me know, I'd be happy to add you to the list and check out your work!
In no particular order... also, I'm listing what I know the users for, but they are not limited to that, they are all super talented and do many things, go check them out.
Ara ara, so this is familiar face who they talk about it. Mandy Martinez from Untameable series. She is get promoted become love interesting in this spin off book. Looks like they relationship get ugly with austeeth👀
These are so bad omg, why do they all look sick. They genuinely look like a person's first fan edit
Meet your actress in this story, Amber Cohen (not cahon cus miss typing)😅 is her name. You can change her name. She is one of protagonist in this new choices story, Guarded. Currently she is play as Selene Grey, a character from fantasy adaptation book who shared name with the title story, Guarded.