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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[SteveC]

I've been wondering about this issue because I've seen it come up a lot recently. I was really wondering if this could even be a thing that could be policed because how would we know if someone had even done this? Looking at this example, it seems pretty obvious, and just bad.

I'm one of the 10 people who watched Hidden Invasion and I saw there was a controversy over using AI for the credits in that show. My reaction was "ah, that's why I thought those credits just looked really bad." I'm sure this will change over time, of course.

 

[mamba]

Better question: did they actually review it in the first place?

I would expect them to, that is my default position, let me know when you know otherwise

 

[mamba]

I want to understand what's going on here. As I understand it this is what happened:
1) An artist did draft work.
2) A second artist used AI to modify it.

Is that what we have here?

I assume so, I do not see the artist doing 1) complaining when they are also the artist doing 2)

 

[mamba]

I think we're about on a six-month cycle at this point for Wizards to find a new rake to step on.

PHB 2024 then?

 

[mamba]

It can't still be incompetence. This is just who they are.

you can be incompetent

 

[Justice and Rule]

I would expect them to, that is my default position, let me know when you know otherwise

I would, too, but they apparently let this go despite the fact that the instant they released it people immediately noticed the problems with it. When someone like me can tell that something is wrong, I feel like an art director should have noticed. It's why I think it's more likely that they already knew.

I assume so, I do not see the artist doing 1) complaining when they are also the artist doing 2)

It's slightly more complicated. One part is that there is an artist (identified above) that used AI to "enhance" their artwork to fill in details. That's tacky and I think lessens the impact of the art overall, especially given the initial sketches seem so good.

However, the other part is that we know at least one person had their initial concept art run through an AI generator to modify it (It's the Altisaur picture, I believe). That seems to have been done without their knowledge by someone else (who may or may not be the artist previously discussed, but I'm going to assume not because we have no evidence of it yet), and I'm not sure that could just be done by accident. That's way more problematic than the first one, and Wizards needs to get called out hard for that sort of thing.

 

[Parmandur]

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.

Nothing in the past 20 years of paying attention to WotC would lead me to expect that much proactive foresight.

 

[mamba]

It's slightly more complicated. One part is that there is an artist (identified above) that used AI to "enhance" their artwork to fill in details. That's tacky and I think lessens the impact of the art overall, especially given the initial sketches seem so good.

sheesh, if I were an artist, I'd do the opposite (assuming I use AI at all)... start with the stuff the AI produces and enhance that. If I am worse than the AI, what am I doing?

 

[Parmandur]

There are apparently two separate issues.

The artist who did some of the giants’ illustrations used AI to ‘enhance’ their own art.

The artist who did the concept pieces for the dinosaurs allegedly had their art ‘enhanced’ by AI by someone else.

WotC have now issued a statement about the former but have yet to comment on the latter.

Do we know that is a seperate issue? Or was this same artist handed over the concept art and commisioned to make the final pictures and took the same shortcut?

 

[Justice and Rule]

sheesh, if I were an artist, I'd do the opposite (assuming I use AI at all)... start with the stuff the AI produces and enhance that. If I am worse than the AI, what am I doing?

I mean, at a certain level I do get it: AI can fill in details really quickly and can do a sometimes passable job. To me, it generally looks very muddy (AI with clothing is generally a tell for me) but sometimes it's okay. Again, I think it's incredibly sad given that the sketched art given was quite nice!

Also to clarify: the artist who had her concept art modified does say that it was the previously-mentioned artist, so it was either this person or she thinks it was this person.