You can now run optimized open source diffusion models on an iPhone, and it's been possible for years.

Games aren't background processes. Even today, triple-A titles still sometimes come out as unoptimized hot garbage. Do you genuinely think it's easy to pile a diffusion model on top with negligible effect? Also, will you pack an entire model into your game just for one instance?

I use that as an example because yes, there's models that can easily run on an Nvidia 1060 these days. Those models are more than enough to handle incremental changes to an image in-game

Look at the share of people using an 1050 or lower card. Or let's talk about the AMD and Intel issues. These people aren't an insignificant portion. Hell, nearly 15% don't even have 16GB of ram.

it's probably the best way to get an uncanny valley effect in ... a horror game, as the alternatives would be:

• spending many hours manually making hundreds of incremental changes
• hiring someone to do what I just mentioned

What are you talking about? You're satisfied with a diffusion model's output, but won't be with any other method except excruciating manual labor? Your standards are all over the place—or rather, you don't have any. And let's keep it real: most won't give a shit if your game can show them 10 or 100 slightly worse versions of the same image.

Procedural generation has been a thing for decades. Indie devs have been making do with nearly nonexistent art skills and less sophisticated tech for just as long. I feel like you don't actually care about the problem space, you just want to shove AI into the solution.

I'll call an open source model exploitation the day someone can accurately generate an exact work it was trained on not within 1, but at least within 10 generations.

Are you referring to the OSAID? The infamously broken definition that exists to serve companies? You don't understand what exploitation here means. "Can it regurgitate exact training input" is not the only question to ask, and not the bar. Knowing your work was used without consent to train computers to replace people’s livelihoods is extremely violating. Talk to artists.

I know the researching ability of people has decreased greatly over the years, but using "knowyourmeme" as a source? Really?

I tried to use an accessible and easily understandable example. Fuck off. Go do your own "research", open those beloved diffusion models, make your scary, then scarier images and try asking people what they think of the results. Do it a hundred times, since that's your only excuse as to why you need AI. No cherry-picking, you won't be able to choose what your rube goldberg painting will look like on other people's PCs.