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​

​

 

[Morrus]

Exactly. WOTC can’t do anything good anymore.

I'm not sure that's fair. People are still buying their stuff in droves. But they did do something pretty bad back in Dec/Jan, and it's taking time to win back trust, and in the meantime they want to be avoiding mistakes. I don't think that's unreasonable.

 

[Faolyn]

All the drawings are his. The grey and the colored ones. He then put the colored ones through an AI to texture it.

OK. Then that's fine. Ish--it's still unprofessional to not go over it again and fix mistakes and make it look better, but he didn't just leave the entire piece up to AI to do.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

I'm not sure that's fair. People are still buying their stuff in droves. But they did do something pretty bad back in Dec/Jan, and it's taking time to win back trust, and in the meantime they want to be avoiding mistakes. I don't think that's unreasonable.

If mistake n is impressive enough, then mistakes n-1, n-2, ... aren't hurting them any more.

 

[Justice and Rule]

Agreed. Something has te be worked out. But in this case it was enhancing.

No, not entirely. Did you read the whole thread, because there was one artist's whose concept work was used as part of an AI drawing, and that's not the same as "enhanced". Further, I'm not sure we can say "enhanced" because we don't know where the information from Ilya's AI "enhancement" was gleaned. All those fill-ins have to come from somewhere. Did he scrap other D&D art to make it fit the style? We really don't know that. It's not as bad, but again, AI does not operate in a vacuum: it has to get the information from somewhere.

Frozen and being encased in ice?

I was thinking more the bow; it melds into their hand, has not string and at the bottom end has a weird bend/flourish that doesn't make sense.

 

[Malmuria]

This whole thing has a weird witch hunt vibe to it.

I suppose if you are uninterested or unaware of the ethical problems associated with AI art, then you could see this as a "witch hunt." Certainly plenty of people on these boards have been uninterested in racist caricature in the art of previous products, or the fact that wotc tried to put half of the indie gaming community out of business with the whole ogl fiasco, or that they sent the pinkertons to harass a youtuber. Maybe if you don't really care about the quality of their books and whether there is competent editorial oversight, because you are buying all the books anyway, then any criticism would seem like a "witch hunt."

Though, in this case you would have to also overlook a) the feelings of the concept artist wotc was working with, and b) perhaps more to the point, the murky legality around AI art and copyright issues, especially going forward.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It strikes me that people are paranoid that WotC will resort to AI to cut costs...when it seems more likely to me thst they will lgo the other way, and use "100% human made art!!" as branding to charge more than competitors who do use AI in the future. Go in a more Elmore-ish direction.

Yeah a lot of stuff that relies on relationship with consumers and community building and creativity will do, I think.

But McDonalds isn’t gonna hire real artists in 2030, unless they have a PR flub to distract people from or something.

 

[Malmuria]

But McDonalds isn’t gonna hire real artists in 2030

It depends on how the law proceeds. I think a corporation will still want to be able to copyright their art

 

[Parmandur]

I suppose if you are uninterested or unaware of the ethical problems associated with AI art, then you could see this as a "witch hunt." Certainly plenty of people on these boards have been uninterested in racist caricature in the art of previous products, or the fact that wotc tried to put half of the indie gaming community out of business with the whole ogl fiasco, or that they sent the pinkertons to harass a youtuber. Maybe if you don't really care about the quality of their books and whether there is competent editorial oversight, because you are buying all the books anyway, then any criticism would seem like a "witch hunt."

Though, in this case you would have to also overlook a) the feelings of the concept artist wotc was working with, and b) perhaps more to the point, the murky legality around AI art and copyright issues, especially going forward.

That's probably not what they were referring to (based on context, they may be pro-AI Art, which I am not). However, conflating all of those incidents with Ilya's shortcut taking here is ailly: nobody at WotC asked Ilya to do this, it seems, and he pulled one over on them. Different from those other things both in who did it, and why.

 

[Parmandur]

It depends on how the law proceeds. I think a corporation will still want to be able to copyright their art

For McDonalds, trademark is no doubt sufficient, unfortunately.

 

[Kurotowa]

Exactly. WOTC can’t do anything good anymore. If you dive into other publishers you’ll find the same ‘problems’.

WotC and 5e have been too successful. Now instead of being part of our scrappy underdog TTRPG community they're The Man. The Other. The Enemy. It doesn't matter than even while being part of Hasbro, WotC is more open and fair than TSR ever was. They're part of The Man now, and The Man can do no right.