D&D 5E Glory of the Giants' AI-Enhanced Art

The latest D&D sourcebook, Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants, comes out in a couple of weeks. However, those who pre-ordered it on D&D Beyond already have access, and many are speculating on the presence of possible AI art in the book.

One of the artists credited is Ilya Shkipin, who does traditional, digital, and AI art. In an interview with AI Art Weekly in December 2022, Shkipin talked at length about their AI art, including the workflow involved.

On Twitter, Shkipin talked more [edit--the tweet has since been deleted but the content is below] about the AI process used in Bigby, indicating that AI was used to enhance some of the art, showing an example of the work.

There is recent controversy on whether these illustrations I made were ai generated. AI was used in the process to generate certain details or polish and editing. To shine some light on the process I'm attaching earlier versions of the illustrations before ai had been applied to enhance details. As you can see a lot of painted elements were enhanced with ai rather than generated from ground up.

-Ilya Shkipin​

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Discussions online look at more of the art in the book, speculating on the amount of AI involvement. There doesn't appear to be any evidence that any of the art is fully AI-generated.

AI art is controversial, with many TTRPG companies publicly stating that they will not use it. DriveThruRPG has recently added new policies regarding transparency around AI-generated content and a ban on 'standalone' AI art products, and Kickstarter has added similar transparency requirements, especially regarding disclosure of the data which is used to train the AI. Many artists have taken a strong stance against AI art, indicating that their art is being 'scraped' in order to produce the content.

UPDATE- Christian Hoffer reached out to WotC and received a response:

Have a statement from Wizards over the AI enhanced artwork in Glory of the Giants. To summarize, they were unaware of the use of AI until the story broke and the artwork was turned in over a year ago. They are updating their Artist guidelines in response to this.

Wizards makes things by humans for humans and that will be reflected in Artist Guidelines moving forward.

-Christian Hoffer​

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The artist, Ilya Shkipin, has removed the initial tweet where the AI process is discussed, and has posted the following:

Deleted previous post as the future of today illustrations is being discussed.

Illustrations are going to be reworked.

-Ilya Shkipin​

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[jasper]

Oh wait, the touch up was done by somebody else and not the artist themself? Okay, I can see how that could be sucky or have the original artist not happy.

If it was the artist themselves that did the touch up, then that's cool.

Unless in their contract, if the artist turn the rights over to WOTC when they got paid. The deal was done. Just like authors who sign the movie rights.

One year ago they received the art. Six months later the public outcry about generative AI (which this artist didn't use) started.
The art director neither operates a time machine nor are they an oracle

Dam it! They should. How dare you let FACTS and TIME! Get in the way of OUR Current Outrage.

 

[kenmarable]

Unless in their contract, if the artist turn the rights over to WOTC when they got paid. The deal was done. Just like authors who sign the movie rights.

It's not that simple. There's still a lot of questions around the dinosaur image, but what people are worried about is they hired April to do concept art, credited her as a concept artist, and compensated her as a concept artist, then IF someone else fed that concept art into an AI engine and that is used as finished interior art without crediting and compensating April as an interior artist (and maybe even giving credit and compensation to whoever the second person is), then that is a far cry from "they got paid, the deal was done."

A closer comparison would be an author signing away the rights for a single movie, then someone else just changes the characters' names but keeps everything else about the story the same, then they make multiple movies out of it without crediting the original author or compensating them beyond the original rights buy.

Or someone tracing April's art on a separate layer of Photoshop, adding some different colors, and then having it published as finished interior art, again with no credit or compensation to April for finished interior art.

It's still unclear exactly what happened with that image and who did what with it, but at the very least there's more serious questions with that one than the others.

 

[Justice and Rule]

Dam it! They should. How dare you let FACTS and TIME! Get in the way of OUR Current Outrage.

I mean, those would have to be actual facts and they very much aren't, especially if you've been following the discourse around this even at a cursory level. It's so weird that people want to find ways of making this some sort of benign mistake when Wizards pointedly did not take a stance on AI art for D&D when it absolutely did with MTG.

 

[Parmandur]

It's not that simple. There's still a lot of questions around the dinosaur image, but what people are worried about is they hired April to do concept art, credited her as a concept artist, and compensated her as a concept artist, then IF someone else fed that concept art into an AI engine and that is used as finished interior art without crediting and compensating April as an interior artist (and maybe even giving credit and compensation to whoever the second person is), then that is a far cry from "they got paid, the deal was done."

A closer comparison would be an author signing away the rights for a single movie, then someone else just changes the characters' names but keeps everything else about the story the same, then they make multiple movies out of it without crediting the original author or compensating them beyond the original rights buy.

Or someone tracing April's art on a separate layer of Photoshop, adding some different colors, and then having it published as finished interior art, again with no credit or compensation to April for finished interior art.

It's still unclear exactly what happened with that image and who did what with it, but at the very least there's more serious questions with that one than the others.

No, WotC took the concept art and hired Ilya to be paid a few credited as the interior artist for the dinosaur pieces. Ilya is the one who decided to cut corners as a freelancer.

 

[kenmarable]

No, WotC took the concept art and hired Ilya to be paid a few credited as the interior artist for the dinosaur pieces. Ilya is the one who decided to cut corners as a freelancer.

My point isn't about who was at fault and I tried to leave that open (maybe the movie analogy failed but that's the problem with analogies). The comment I was replying to was the claim that since April was paid for the concept art then "the deal is done" - implying it's acceptable to run her concept art image through an AI engine and then publish it as finished interior art without credit or compensation. Regardless of who was responsible for that, it should not be an acceptable thing to do even if she sold her rights to the concept art. That was not the deal that she made when she sold those rights. That's what I was replying to and the point I was making.

 

[Abstruse]

Unless in their contract, if the artist turn the rights over to WOTC when they got paid. The deal was done. Just like authors who sign the movie rights.

Once again I'm forced to repeat: "Legal" is not the same thing as "ethical". Just because a person or company is legally allowed to do something does not make it right for them to do it.

 

[Parmandur]

My point isn't about who was at fault and I tried to leave that open (maybe the movie analogy failed but that's the problem with analogies). The comment I was replying to was the claim that since April was paid for the concept art then "the deal is done" - implying it's acceptable to run her concept art image through an AI engine and then publish it as finished interior art without credit or compensation. Regardless of who was responsible for that, it should not be an acceptable thing to do even if she sold her rights to the concept art. That was not the deal that she made when she sold those rights. That's what I was replying to and the point I was making.

The question of whether it is OK is fairly boring, because it is obviously not OK. The question that is interesting is who, and why.

 

[Parmandur]

Bit of an irony with this picture of Ilya's, and AI being notorious about hands (even if thisnis on purpose):

 

[pukunui]

In case it makes any difference, the book does have a concept art section, and what I can only presume is April’s original concept art of the dinosaurs is included.

Spoiler

 

[bedir than]

Bit of an irony with this picture of Ilya's, and AI being notorious about hands (even if thisnis on purpose):

View attachment 291870

Rakasha have always had backward hands