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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[Morrus]

Is there a substantive difference between this and using a Photoshop tool to edit an existing drawing?

So it's about plagiarism. AI art doesn't create art. It regurgitates it. It doesn't make anything new. And you can see that when artists' mutated signatures appear in the output, which is a thing that happens. That's not what a human artist drawing 'inspiration' from their predecessors does.

Until there is an opt-in framework whereby artists can be compensated for having their art scanned and reprinted (albeit mutated), there are ethical issues.

And to to those who compare it to the engine replacing the horse, or whatever--sure. But the engine doesn't keep the horse around and suck on its calories. It uses it's own. AI needs the artist to copy from. No artist, no AI.

So we're not talking 'inspiration' or 'influence' - AI copies art to the extent that you can sometimes still see the original signatures.

That's the difference.

 

[Justice and Rule]

Is there a substantive difference between this and using a Photoshop tool to edit an existing drawing?

Yes, a Photoshop tool doesn't need to scrap art to do this sort of thing, though it generally can't do the same sort of complexities that AI generation is attempting. Using the tool would require the user's skill to actually do things properly, while AI generation relies on the art it scraps to create an imitation of style that it can overlay on to things.

 

[Baron Opal II]

So it's about plagiarism. AI art doesn't create art. It regurgitates it.

Okay, but it's her art to begin with, right?

I get that typing prompts or keywords, getting something back, and presenting it as your own work is ethically fraught. But that's not what happened in this instance, correct?

 

[Morrus]

Okay, but it's her art to begin with, right?

I get that typing prompts or keywords, getting something back, and presenting it as your own work is ethically fraught. But that's not what happened in this instance, correct?

No, because the AI tool being used scrapes other peoples' art, not just yours. There's no AI tool that can extrapolate on your one single piece of art without outside input. That requires originality which is human input.

These tools all rely on large data sets. They don't take you sketch and magically alter it in complete isolation. That's magic. And magic doesn't exist.

 

[osarusan]

That's a strange concept of "enhancing".

Indeed. Taking a 5 minute digital sketch and running it through a filter so it looks like someone spent 5 to 10 hours painting it is a very generous usage of the word "enhance."

 

[mazeru]

Okay, but it's her art to begin with, right?

I get that typing prompts or keywords, getting something back, and presenting it as your own work is ethically fraught. But that's not what happened in this instance, correct?

Yes and no. The sketches are Ilya's, yes. But if you put it through a generator to get the inpaint the way it was done here, it's equivalent to giving the sketches to someone else to finish them for you, and then claiming you did all the job (even though the actual hardest part of the process you had no actual hand in)... except in this case the 'person' you gave it to to finish it for you essentially scrambled bits and pieces of other people's works over the sketches.

In a way, think of it as if you ordered a custom, hand-made item from someone, and they sent you a bootleg from Wish. They might have been the designer of the item, but it's not design you paid for, but the item itself. The full artwork, not just a concept sketch. And that item in question was made not by the person you commissioned to do it, but instead in an exploitative sweatshop with subpar quality standards.

 

[Clint_L]

Yes and no. The sketches are Ilya's, yes. But if you put it through a generator to get the inpaint the way it was done here, it's equivalent to giving the sketches to someone else to finish them for you, and then claiming you did all the job (even though the actual hardest part of the process you had no actual hand in)... except in this case the 'person' you gave it to to finish it for you essentially scrambled bits and pieces of other people's works over the sketches.

This is not remotely how AI generated art works.

In a way, think of it as if you ordered a custom, hand-made item from someone, and they sent you a bootleg from Wish. They might have been the designer of the item, but it's not design you paid for, but the item itself. The full artwork, not just a concept sketch. And that item in question was made not by the person you commissioned to do it, but instead in an exploitative sweatshop with subpar quality standards.

Again, not accurate and highly hyperbolic. It is almost impossible to have a reasonable discussion of this issue if we are going to keep keep turning the rhetoric up to 11. Even if you disagree with this artist's process, comparing them to an exploitative sweatshop? Really?

 

[mazeru]

This is not remotely how AI generated art works.

Again, not accurate and highly hyperbolic. It is almost impossible to have a reasonable discussion of this issue if we are going to keep keep turning the rhetoric up to 11. Even if you disagree with this artist's process, comparing them to an exploitative sweatshop? Really?

How is it not how the AI works? It has no incentive of its own, it has to rely on input data to create anything, and that input has been obtained in unethical ways. It also has little to no prompter involvement, so the point about the artist basically handing the sketch to someone else to finish remains, as does the metaphor of a poor quality sweatshop result being what you are given instead of a handmade item. Is it hyperbolic? Yes. But most people who are not in either the artist nor the ML community will usually understand those better than trying to go on lengthy discussions on the ethics and technical minutae of the process.

Bottom line remains that the works can no longer really be attiributed on most part as Illya's artwork beyond the sketch phase, so WotC has essentially not gotten what they had paid the artist for.

 

[Zardnaar]

Not sure how they're getting crap art like that. IDK what they're using but elsewhere.

 

[Justice and Rule]

Not sure how they're getting crap art like that. IDK what they're using but elsewhere.
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Yeah, but if you take a real look at those rather than just the thumbnail, you can see that so much of the fine linework is just jumbled. Look at the railings, the tire spokes on the car, the driver's side chair (or whatever the hell that thing poking up in there is), the feet of the people, the window panes on the left side of the corner of that factory, most of the background left of center behind that skeleton cyborg...

AI is really good at looking impressive at a glance. Once you look closer, it's like realizing you're looking at an illusion: you begin to see the artifice and the rest of it starts to fall apart. Same deal with the pictures here: they look okay on a glance, but if you actually look at what's going on, it starts to fall apart.

Edit: I think the best way to put it is that AI is good enough at getting close to what we think should be there that our minds can fill in what we think is there and think it's really good... until we look and see that it's not what we were mentally filling in, but something far less refined and far more chaotic.