WotC WotC: 'Artists Must Refrain From Using AI Art Generation'

After it was revealed this week that one of the artists for Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants used artificial intelligence as part of their process when creating some of the book's images, Wizards of the Coast has made a short statement via the D&D Beyond Twitter (X?) account.

The statement is in image format, so I've transcribed it below.

Today we became aware that an artist used AI to create artwork for the upcoming book, Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants. We have worked with this artist since 2014 and he's put years of work into book we all love. While we weren't aware of the artist's choice to use AI in the creation process for these commissioned pieces, we have discussed with him, and he will not use AI for Wizards' work moving forward. We are revising our process and updating our artist guidelines to make clear that artists must refrain from using AI art generation as part of their art creation process for developing D&D art.

-Wizards of the Coast​

Ilya Shkipin, the artist in question, talked about AI's part in his process during the week, but has since deleted those posts.

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 Shlipin​

​

 

[Scribe]

Great breakdown.

I’m fairly optimistic, as you might recall from past discussions, but I’m certainly not dismissing the potential for the 2040’s being like the Great Depression and the cultural revolution unrest of the 60’s, combined and then turned up to 11.

I mean, my store could be run by the three most experienced counter people, and a couple people to pick and run parts, right now. I’m not needed to find a serpentine belt for a stock 1997 Ford Ranger. I’m just needed for actually investigating and troubleshooting and matching by sight and experience.

A lot of jobs don’t have anything remotely like old guys custom rebuilding 100 year old vehicles that no one makes parts for. I don’t think it’ll be as soon as the next 20-50 years, but someday they will be replaced by automation.

Yeah, I'm not worried for myself. Its my kid and if he has kids, thats where the real pain will be.

 

[Nellisir]

No?

So extrapolate the situation. There is reasonable cause for concern. Its not like corporations outsourced work because they 'wanted to give a leg up to other nations.' They did it to cut costs. Its not like there isnt already automation in things such as coding. Its not like we are not seeing huge strides in generated text and art, and analysis and processing. Is it an urban legend that one of the bots now could pass law exams? We also know that automation, self managed check out, Amazon type business, is all squeezing out other jobs.

We then add on the very fun inflation rate, the increase (in my country) to interest rates, and the housing crisis (try finding an apartment lol and managing it while you work your min wage job).

Its not adding up well here.

So if the answer isnt to just 'pull yourself up' what work are you going to be doing?

Trades, for...who exactly can afford it?

Funny anacdote. I went on a long drive today to check out a small village, I saw they had some property for sale in the 400-500K range. I'd never been there, but had heard of it, and looking around I could see it had some great opportunity to be back in a lower pop, nature rich region.

Well I got there, and its a bump in the road. Its nothing. It exists to support 1 company, that is harvesting lumber (shipped out as raw logs because Canada is stupid and likes to be taken advantage of) and thats it. 400K+, and the assessment value? sub 200K.

So who's buying? Granted, cutting down trees isnt something AI will be doing any time soon, but I'm not sure its what I want to be doing as I approach retirement.

Well, I appreciate being asked post de facto.
Short version: I think we'll see policy (economic, legal) changes before things approach mad max levels. I don't think AI will be banned, and I don't think it'll be universally adopted. I think it'll be required to be identifiable and AI's will be developed (probably are) to ID it. I don't know what jobs future people will do.

If government can't respond to mass unemployment and remains static, then maybe, but I don't think that's realistic in the US or Canada.

I'm in the trades. Residential construction. Prices are -stupid- high. But people keep buying, and we're slammed with work. I'm honestly trying to get out of it and into a more creative sort of employment. One in which mass manufacturing came and took over two hundred years ago, but people still pay for handmade.

 

[Nellisir]

I promise you I’m not the one who didn’t track the thread here.

Yeah, we're done.

 

[Nellisir]

Yeah, I'm not worried for myself. Its my kid and if he has kids, thats where the real pain will be.

Agreed. Pretty much everything I'm working towards is with an eye towards giving my daughter a solid foundation and some ongoing security after I'm gone (no time soon, one hopes). Which, I know my dad has the same thing in mind, but there's heavy touches of what I can only call baby boomer arrogance in it.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yeah, I'm not worried for myself. Its my kid and if he has kids, thats where the real pain will be.

Yeah of course. 50 years, I’ll be pushing 90, and well…medical science isn’t advancing as fast as we all hoped it would be when we looked forward from the turn of the century. (Why would run right into politics, but basically, decreased investment)

But yeah even I, an optimist, don’t think we are gonna get anything like constitutionally guaranteed UBI and public housing, or any other solution that will benefit the general public rather than the oligarchs, without unrest, if at all.

Like a lot of unrest.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yeah of course. 50 years, I’ll be pushing 90, and well…medical science isn’t advancing as fast as we all hoped it would be when we looked forward from the turn of the century. (Why would run right into politics, but basically, decreased investment)

But yeah even I, an optimist, don’t think we are gonna get anything like constitutionally guaranteed UBI and public housing, or any other solution that will benefit the general public rather than the oligarchs, without unrest, if at all.

Like a lot of unrest.

Butlerian Jyhad time. Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Butlerian Jyhad time. Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.

Id rather point my compass toward a mostly post-labor society, personally, but that works too.

 

[Zardnaar]

Id rather point my compass toward a mostly post-labor society, personally, but that works too.

Vote Skynet your friendly representative of the Leopards Ate my Face party.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Vote Skynet your friendly representative of the Leopards Ate my Face party.

Eh that sort of AI is about as likely as it ever was, which is to say, I’ll believe it when I see it.

I’m more worried about aliens than I am skynet.

 

[RareBreed]

Yup - this is where I'm at as well. I'm an iOS-developer during my day job, and I'm also going back to the basics. In 10 years the IT-landscape will look vastly different.

There was a whitepaper on early work for GPT4, and it did an Amazon Technical interview. It scored 100% and did it in under 4 minutes. I am pretty sure if an interviewer didn't know they were testing AI, they would hire it in a heart beat. The hiring process in software development is very broken too, but that's another story.

What I find really odd is that almost all my coworkers are taking this like a non-threat and don't seem to be concerned at all. Maybe because I am the oldest (the next oldest is like 16 years my junior) I've seen more of what corporate America can do. But despite the Silicon Valley prejudice, I am not an old dog who can't learn new tricks and I have always been reinventing my career. I have done everything from embedded microcontrollers (before they were called IoT devices), linux device drivers, web front and backend, and data engineering. At least one good thing that has come of this, is that I find it a very refreshing change of pace relearning the math and understanding how deep learning actually works. I have always considered myself more of a scientist than engineer, if the old expression "An engineer learns in order to build. A scientist builds in order to learn" is true.

The real question for me is whether AI will replace humans or augment them. My gut is telling me that corporations will do whatever they can to cut costs. That is after all, the essence of Capitalism, because if your company doesn't do it, another will (there's some big caveats to AI in particular, namely that training these LLMs is incredibly expensive...so only the richest big companies will be able to do this). They will "trim the fat" as long as that makes the stockholders happy. I'm really curious if the managers/bean counters who make those decisions wonder if they can also be replaced?

And will regulations work? As soon as China or some other country starts doing things more cost efficiently, then it will become an AI arms race (in more ways than one). This is a big reason America has been banning GPU/NPU/TPU specialized processor chips to China in a move to hopefully kneecap them in the AI race. Of course, this also means that China will be forced to design their own homegrown chips (fortunately, the lithography and other wafer technology processes are dominated by the Dutch and Americans, and it will be a LONG time before the Chinese can catch up...unless they skip right to Quantum Processors or other alternative ML accelerator architectures).