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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[bedir than]

An email going out saying "hey, our position about AI at WotC is still being decided, but we'd like you to keep us in the loop if you're using it in any work you're doing under contract with us" isn't a big lift or a weird thing to expect a manager to send out any time in the past six months.

If I were a senior manager at WotC, I would have expected -- even instructed -- all my managers to gather that info after the last AI kerfuffle.

So you sent that email six months ago. A reasonable idea and one that seems in line with their withdrawal from NFT and the AI space.

The art was turned in six months before that. It was in the layout already and was essentially on its way to the printer

 

[MonsterEnvy]

beaten

 

[TheSword]

You can’t expect to hold people to a standard that hasn’t been invented yet. Neither the artiste nor the companies that are paying good money for art. As best we can tell this is neither an artist trying to profit off someone else’s effort nor a company trying to get away with not paying creators for work.

I notice the raft of companies that have released statements on AI didn’t have these in place a year ago. Augury is a spell in D&D not an expected talent held by the people publishing it.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The art was turned in six months before that. It was in the layout already and was essentially on its way to the printer

These are digital files. They can be changed at up to the last minute. And the book was certainly not onto its printer more than six months ago.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

If the person you're hiring puts the fact that they're all-in on AI on their social media profiles, that merits keeping a closer eye on things.

I only employ like, five (or so) people, and I don't think I've ever looked at any of their social media profiles. I guess, it might be an important thing to do if there was a chance that some high-profile controversy could result if I didn't! But I can understand why an art director might have (seemingly) better things to do with their time.

 

[Justice and Rule]

Honestly I'm amazed that the Frost Giantess drawing passed scrutiny even without being identified as AI art. That one just looks bad. But given that it seems this guy was specifically hired to "enhance" or otherwise do something with these pictures, seems negligent that they wouldn't look into how before hiring him.

 

[Scribe]

I guess, it might be an important thing to do if there was a chance that some high-profile controversy could result if I didn't!

Of perhaps if you were a large company that put one foot in your mouth, one hand into a fire, and stepped in something with your other foot, over the last year or so, you may start to look around and think about what else could be next on the 'self inflicted unforced errors' list.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I only employ like, five (or so) people, and I don't think I've ever looked at any of their social media profiles. I guess, it might be an important thing to do if there was a chance that some high-profile controversy could result if I didn't! But I can understand why an art director might have (seemingly) better things to do with their time.

Fair enough. I suspect it'll be part of the procedure going forward at a minimum, then.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

 

[Abstruse]

Response posted to the official D&D Beyond Twitter account (which I think someone else linked to but Twitter's embeds don't work anymore, like half of the rest of the stuff on that site).