Hexmage-EN
Legend
AI image generators such as Dall-E 2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion allow anyone to enter in a prompt for an AI trained on potentially billions of images to have it produce artworks that would take human artists far longer to create. Though they currently have shortcomings such as difficulty getting hands right, the technology is advancing quickly enough that even now there are D&D DMs and players using AI image generators to quickly create reasonably good images for their characters, NPCs, and locations.
The recent Spelljammer book was full of art, with WotC noting the higher than normal art budget. However, reviewers have bemoaned the lack of other content even as they appreciate the visuals. If they cared to, WotC could one day soon utilize an AI image generator to produce nice looking images with a much, much lower art budget. For example, they could hypothetically use an AI art generator to create images in the style of DiTerlizzi for the upcoming Planescape book.
Professional artists are obviously worried about being replaced, but for the end consumer will it matter who or what made the illustrations in a D&D book? I'm curious to see where opinions lie on this here.