UI question: AI or not AI

Hi everyone,

Now, like almost all game developers, I occasionally get AI help to speed things up. I must say that I am more liberal than most developers when it comes to AI. If it looks good and you don't "borrow" anyone's intellectual ideas, I think it's fine.

Recently, I created a few AI images to speed up the build. My goal was to use them for the UI, but although the results looked good, I decided that they were not suitable for use in the game.

If the purpose of an image is to convey information, the priority of that image is to be easy to understand. The purpose of this image is to tell the player that this is the button that goes to the recipes. The AI image you see on the left looks very nice, but I think it will tire the eyes over time. The ones on the right are extremely simple, uglier, but more understandable (the font can be changed).

Another problem is that I can't modify the AI images. Instead of trying to create an AI image that fits the needs exactly and then adjusting it to the shape I have in mind, it makes more sense to just make what I want from scratch.

I looked at the UI images of other simulation games, for example Sims 4, House Flipper 2 etc. Even they use extremely simple visuals and text. I think there is no need to reinvent the wheel.

Also, when I said I didn't use AI, the street cred it gave me was a plus of course :)