To Everyone who said "your art sucks" and "Great now I will never play your game" all because i said i was removing all my AI generated art, here is what happened.
I know this is going to ruffle some feathers, but I was honestly pretty frustrated with the reaction I got when talking about. Yes, I'm not the best pixel artist in the world, but used skills improve. The main advantage to this is that I have developed a cohesive theme across my art, and with every iteration I improve on my skills. The last 2 images were the ones I showed on the original post. You can see in the rework of the goddess (the colorful-haired girl) the amount of skill and style I have already begun to develop. I've also created a backdrop customizer (the town and mounteans) It is created in layers so the different components can be swapped out while players unlcok them. This is a result of innovating due to the limitations of my own art and genuinely forced me to create something new and cool for my players that i never would have done and honesty never could have done using AI art assets.
While I understand a lot of the frustrations around AI art and the controversy of it, just like every other tool in existence throughout history, things come with their pros and cons. My experience and my movement away from AI-generated art is not the universal one and wasn't done out of some "righteous" sentiment or moral reason. I'm not an "Anti-AI"er, but I'm also not a "Pro-AI"er—I'm a realist. I look at the tools before me, I try them to see what works, and MOST IMPORTANTLY I look at the game I want to make and decide based on that what to do. People who push AI out of "FOMO" are no better than those that deny any use of it and say it's the spawn of the devil.
No matter what tool you are using the laws of technology stay the same.
Observe shifts, People behavior, or emerging data/systems.
Come up with solutions and hypothesizes based on these signals
building prototypes, MVPs, and test out the solutions
Analyze form your testing
Trim the fat! Through out what doesn't work and keep what dose.
If you skip these steps for any reason while using new tools, technology, building a new game, or even an iteration on a GUI or the type of art you make, you are taking on huge amounts of risk. Never use AI just because you can, that is unless you're not really interested in the outcome. And my previous statement about my switch away from AI art still stands! I found it was not the proper tool for my game and that the results were not getting me what I wanted. And i believed and still believe now that new game developers who are jumping on the AI art bandwagon are potentially hurting there game, there won skills and will likely not get them the result they need. I wasted time, money, and needed to rework large portions of my game and I'm simply trying to warn others that they may end up doing the same.
In the end the choice is up to the dev. Its your game. AI art might work for you. but don't do it just to save time. maybe try it but look hard at its capabilities yourself don't do it just because your art isn't the best. and certainly don't do it simply because some pro AI person told you that if you take the time to make art your falling behind. AI is very good at tricking the unprepared whether that be in a regular prompt, an art output, or a block of code. Don't offload the responsibilities of the dev to the AI. Your the one in charge.
I just wanted to get this off my chest as the comments did bother me more than i was expecting and had some unresolved frustrations XD.
EDIT
TLDR: My art skills improved, I created new interesting features, and my game has a more cohesive feel across the bored.