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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[Parmandur]

Rakasha have always had backward hands

I know. Still ironic.

 

[Golroc]

Commissioning concept art and then making a directly derivative work is incredibly lazy and silly - regardless of whether one is using AI or tasking an artist with turning the concept art into an illustration. Both of these are perfectly capable of creating an illustration based on the concept art which isn't directly and grossly derivative (and yes, the human artist will do a much better job, but AI systems can turn concept into illustrations). The whole dinosaur thing thus highlights another problem with the art direction for this book. Concept art isn't "draft" art. Even if an artist signs off the rights when delivering the work - it's very odd for a publisher to treat concept art in this way. Ilya can certainly do better work (AI, mixed and traditional), so if that was the artist doing this (which I don't think has been confirmed?) then that is also weird. To me this feels like the book was made on an extremely tight budget, which isn't really acceptable considering the cost of the book and the expectations for such an established game and publisher.

 

[Parmandur]

Commissioning concept art and then making a directly derivative work is incredibly lazy and silly - regardless of whether one is using AI or tasking an artist with turning the concept art into an illustration. Both of these are perfectly capable of creating an illustration based on the concept art which isn't directly and grossly derivative (and yes, the human artist will do a much better job, but AI systems can turn concept into illustrations). The whole dinosaur thing thus highlights another problem with the art direction for this book. Concept art isn't "draft" art. Even if an artist signs off the rights when delivering the work - it's very odd for a publisher to treat concept art in this way. Ilya can certainly do better work (AI, mixed and traditional), so if that was the artist doing this (which I don't think has been confirmed?) then that is also weird. To me this feels like the book was made on an extremely tight budget, which isn't really acceptable considering the cost of the book and the expectations for such an established game and publisher.

That's how D&D makes their art all they time: they develop a concept piece for reference, then hire an illustrator to make a final in-page image. And in the past they would trust that the interior illustrator wouldn't use AI.

Based on how they operate, this scenario playing out this way makes sense. Eventually some contractor or another would take a short-cut, as has happen the past freelancers passing along plagiarized work to WotC.

 

[TheSword]

Commissioning concept art and then making a directly derivative work is incredibly lazy and silly - regardless of whether one is using AI or tasking an artist with turning the concept art into an illustration. Both of these are perfectly capable of creating an illustration based on the concept art which isn't directly and grossly derivative (and yes, the human artist will do a much better job, but AI systems can turn concept into illustrations). The whole dinosaur thing thus highlights another problem with the art direction for this book. Concept art isn't "draft" art. Even if an artist signs off the rights when delivering the work - it's very odd for a publisher to treat concept art in this way. Ilya can certainly do better work (AI, mixed and traditional), so if that was the artist doing this (which I don't think has been confirmed?) then that is also weird. To me this feels like the book was made on an extremely tight budget, which isn't really acceptable considering the cost of the book and the expectations for such an established game and publisher.

What makes you think the book was made on a tight budget?

 

[BB Shockwave]

I know people who instead of inking a sketch, use some technique called vektoring in photoshop. I tried it a few times, never worked... I am sticking to what I know. At any rate, looking at the Maw of Yeenoghu, it looks like the artist basically had the AI somehow do all the digital coloring, which... I am wondering how that is possible. Most AI scripts I saw would just mash together images or add a style filter, nothing this specific. Seems more like this was a specific script written for this specific image alone.

 

[dave2008]

I know people who instead of inking a sketch, use some technique called vektoring in photoshop. I tried it a few times, never worked... I am sticking to what I know. At any rate, looking at the Maw of Yeenoghu, it looks like the artist basically had the AI somehow do all the digital coloring, which... I am wondering how that is possible. Most AI scripts I saw would just mash together images or add a style filter, nothing this specific. Seems more like this was a specific script written for this specific image alone.

The artist didn't show the entire process. Just a before and after. I'm not sure, but I don't think it went from color sketch to AI to finished rendering. There was likely some back and forth. Additionally, the AI could have been trained on his own work for all we know. Not sure when AI came onto the scene, but he has been producing art for WotC since 2014 which is before AI art I thought. So I'm guessing they are pretty legit talented.

 

[shadowoflameth]

If they found anyone else whose work was plagiarized, that would be different for me, but if he used computer tools to edit or 'enhance, his own work and did so himself, that's him doing his job. It's a big 'so what.'

 

[Parmandur]

The artist didn't show the entire process. Just a before and after. I'm not sure, but I don't think it went from color sketch to AI to finished rendering. There was likely some back and forth. Additionally, the AI could have been trained on his own work for all we know. Not sure when AI came onto the scene, but he has been producing art for WotC since 2014 which is before AI art I thought. So I'm guessing they are pretty legit talented.

This is Ilya's work from the Monster Manual, obviously no AI element then:

 

[mazeru]

That would be Emi Tanji.

If this is true, then that explains far more things than I wish it did. I've been kind of side-eyeing the pieces she art directed for a while now (pale beach boy drow is the one that immediately springs to my mind whenever I hear the name... questionable design, the pieces were just subpar in quality compared to even other works by the same artist, for some reason).

 

[pukunui]

If this is true ...

Here's the full credits for the book.

Spoiler