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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[Golroc]

We have at least 2 other AI focused threads at the moment, that have at times meandered into 'what exactly are these AI programs doing'.

I have to wonder if Wizards knew, considering the profile of the artist I assume so, and if they would have accepted AI art now, or how long ago this was accepted?

The image modification done by this artist is very similar in nature to the machine learning-powered software development tools used by many companies - and the machine learning-powered translations that are used even more widely go further. So I would assume the art director at Wizards did accept this particular use of AI tools.

 

[Abstruse]

While I do agree that using AI-art to "make" images and what not does suck, I don't see an issue with using it to do minor hits like touching/tightening up an image. The artist is still drawing/getting paid for their work and NOT having it stolen by a completely A.I. generated art.

Except it IS being stolen. When the original art is fed into the program, it becomes part of the algorithm's database and used to create future artwork.

Hell, you could argue it's actually LESS ethical to do this than it would be to just use generative algorithms to create the art from scratch because at least in the latter case, it's not directly adding an artist's original work to the algorithm.

 

[mamba]

Except it IS being stolen. When the original art is fed into the program, it becomes part of the algorithm's database and used to create future artwork.

you have no idea if that is true, when I sharpen an image in Photoshop, that is all that happens, this could very well be similar

Hell, you could argue it's actually LESS ethical to do this than it would be to just use generative algorithms to create the art from scratch because at least in the latter case, it's not directly adding an artist's original work to the algorithm.

yeah, I do not see that, they paid the artist for their work and used it in an agreed upon (or at l least legally permitted) way. Not sure how cutting the artist out improves things

 

[bedir than]

Wizards put out a statement. They didn't know it was AI at the time. The commission was made well before the pushback against generative AI went mainstream.

 

[Weiley31]

I still don't see anything wrong when A.I. art is used in a reasonable/responsible manner. Stuff like the porn deepfakes and stealing the work of other artists is where I draw the line at it.

 

[TheSword]

Except it IS being stolen. When the original art is fed into the program, it becomes part of the algorithm's database and used to create future artwork.

Hell, you could argue it's actually LESS ethical to do this than it would be to just use generative algorithms to create the art from scratch because at least in the latter case, it's not directly adding an artist's original work to the algorithm.

Wait, how can it be unethical if the artist is chosing to do this?

 

[Weiley31]

Wait, how can it be unethical if the artist is chosing to do this?

Or as stated before, is just used to "touch up" their image AFTER they had drawn/finished the artwork.

 

[Abstruse]

you have no idea if that is true, when I sharpen an image in Photoshop, that is all that happens, this could very well be similar


yeah, I do not see that, they paid the artist for their work and used it in an agreed upon (or at l least legally permitted) way. Not sure how cutting the artist out improves things

1) Yes, I do. The terms of service for every major generative algorithm software includes a clause that all work submitted to the algorithm is also added to the database. That's why there's been a big dust-up in the fanfiction community as people have fed incomplete fanfics into ChatGPT to "create" an ending.

2) Legal is not the same as ethical. Just because you're legally allowed to do something doesn't make it right to do that thing.

 

[Abstruse]

Wait, how can it be unethical if the artist is chosing to do this?

It's not the artist choosing to do this. Wizards of the Coast hired freelance artists to draw concept art for Bigby's Big Book of Big Boys. Wizards then gave that concept artwork to another freelancer to "enhance" the art using algorithmic generation. The artists of the original artwork were did NOT consent to their artwork being used in algorithmic generation of content and weren't even informed that it would be done. At least one artist on Bluesky stated they found out when everyone else did after the interview with the "AI artist".

I feel so genuinely betrayed by WotC allowing an artist to use AI as part of their process for interior art in the most recent DnD book. Having concepts I worked on ran through a scraping program and turned into slop isn't really how I wanted to spend August.

 

[Weiley31]

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.