Not every piece of art you don't like was made by AI

[Morrus]

There have been a few public accusations recently which proved to be incorrect (the WotC one hit the news, although the reverse has also been true).

It turns out that we humans are not good at detecting AI. And we're developing a trend of thinking any art we don't like, or any art we spot a mistake in, is AI.

The AI detection tools aren't any better than us at it, either. At least not yet.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but artists I know have been harmed by these random accusations. It's easy to just point at a piece of art you don't like and claim it was obviously made by AI, but often there's a real human at the other end of that trying to make a living.

And those real artists are harmed by AI art, too. Being the real victims here (them, not us), being harmed by everybody--the AI 'artists' and the general public--has gotta suck.

I think it would behoove us not to claim art is AI unless we know it is. And, further, given that we, and the tools, clearly can't accurately detect AI art, give companies who are deceived into using it a little leeway. I can't reliably tell, and I've been caught out before. WotC has. There was that artist who provided AI art for the Terminator RPG. It happens. As long as the company fixes it when they find out, there's really not much more they can do.

I don't know what the future will hold. But pointing fingers at genuine artists and companies which were tricked isn't the answer.

Being vigilant is good. Making false accusations is bad for everybody.

 

[MGibster]

What's amazing to me is how long AI art has been a problem in role playing games. Check out this obviously AI generated image from 1st edition AD&D? You might think AI is terrible about rendering human hands today, but look at this attempt at a face found in the 1st edition Player's Handbook.

In all seriousness, we should all take great care when we make accusations of any kind.

 

[Distracted DM]

Yeah, it's already hard enough for artists out there without requiring them to track and keep every step of the process like that poor person that did the 2024 PHB fortunately had done (and a few others that were accused).

 

[Reynard]

Maybe pull back on the idea it is some sort of monstrous behavior?

Nah. We just need to be more careful about who we castigate.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

There have been a few public accusations recently which proved to be incorrect (the WotC one hit the news, although the reverse has also been true).

It turns out that we humans are not good at detecting AI. And we're developing a trend of thinking any art we don't like, or any art we spot a mistake in, is AI.

The AI detection tools aren't any better than us at it, either. At least not yet.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but artists I know have been harmed by these random accusations. It's easy to just point at a piece of art you don't like and claim it was obviously made by AI, but often there's a real human at the other end of that trying to make a living.

And those real artists are harmed by AI art, too. Being the real victims here (them, not us), being harmed by everybody--the AI 'artists' and the general public--has gotta suck.

I think it would behoove us not to claim art is AI unless we know it is. And, further, given that we, and the tools, clearly can't accurately detect AI art, give companies who are deceived into using it a little leeway. I can't reliably tell, and I've been caught out before. WotC has. There was that artist who provided AI art for the Terminator RPG. It happens. As long as the company fixes it when they find out, there's really not much more they can do.

I don't know what the future will hold. But pointing fingers at genuine artists and companies which were tricked isn't the answer.

Being vigilant is good. Making false accusations is bad for everybody.

I think AI paranoia is setting in, folks need to just chill.

 

[Andvari]

Won't be long before we accuse every piece of art that's too good of being made by AI.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think it would behoove us not to claim art is AI unless we know it is. And, further, given that we, and the tools, clearly can't accurately detect AI art, give companies who are deceived into using it a little leeway. I can't reliably tell, and I've been caught out before. WotC has. There was that artist who provided AI art for the Terminator RPG. It happens. As long as the company fixes it when they find out, there's really not much more they can do.

This is a Catch-22 situation though, isn't it, @Morrus?

Unless people keep making accusations, some of which will - I completely agree - be proven baseless, then we'll gradually see more and more "low detectability" AI art creep into stuff. I'd rather people made bad accusations and then got shown to be wrong than people stopped making accusations.

It's trivially easy to disprove such allegations to a publisher or the like, because as a digital artist, you simply send the the appropriate file that shows how you constructed the art. You already have that file! You needed it to make the art! You don't just delete those! So it's not a big deal imho.

Yeah, it's already hard enough for artists out there without requiring them to track and keep every step of the process like that poor person that did the 2024 PHB fortunately had done (and a few others that were accused).

No, dude, I get you're not an artist so you don't understand. But when make digital art, you do this automatically. It's not extra book-keeping for digital artists so don't make up stuff like this. No-one is requiring digital artists to "track and keep every step of the process" - if you were doing digital art you would understand that this inherent to the process. Seriously, if you do a few tutorials, spend a few week fiddling around with GIMP or something and a big lightbulb will come on above your head.

It's not that the artist had meticulously documented this - he just kept pressing save in a file type that records everything you do so you can reverse or change it - which is what GIMP, Photoshop (and Paintshop back in the day) and so on have been doing SINCE THE 1990s! I know this because I used to do digital art - indeed, half my art A-level from the year of our lord 1997 was done digitally!

This is not new. Please don't make up fictional difficulties. People will believe you. I would go as far as to suggest editing your post to prevent anyone in future seeing it and thinking "THOSE POOR ARTISTS!". Yes being an artist suuuuucks, I stopped for a reason! But that ain't the reason. If you are doing real digital art, you already have everything you need to prove it is real. That is the one good thing here.

 

[MarkB]

This is a Catch-22 situation though, isn't it, @Morrus?

Unless people keep making accusations, some of which will - I completely agree - be proven baseless, then we'll gradually see more and more "low detectability" AI art creep into stuff. I'd rather people made bad accusations and then got shown to be wrong than people stopped making accusations.

It's trivially easy to disprove such allegations to a publisher or the like, because as a digital artist, you simply send the the appropriate file that shows how you constructed the art. You already have that file! You needed it to make the art! You don't just delete those! So it's not a big deal imho.


No, dude, I get you're not an artist so you don't understand. But when make digital art, you do this automatically. It's not extra book-keeping for digital artists so don't make up stuff like this. No-one is requiring digital artists to "track and keep every step of the process" - if you were doing digital art you would understand that this inherent to the process. Seriously, if you do a few tutorials, spend a few week fiddling around with GIMP or something and a big lightbulb will come on above your head.

It's not that the artist had meticulously documented this - he just kept pressing save in a file type that records everything you do so you can reverse or change it - which is what GIMP, Photoshop (and Paintshop back in the day) and so on have been doing SINCE THE 1990s! I know this because I used to do digital art - indeed, half my art A-level from the year of our lord 1997 was done digitally!

This is not new. Please don't make up fictional difficulties. People will believe you. I would go as far as to suggest editing your post to prevent anyone in future seeing it and thinking "THOSE POOR ARTISTS!". Yes being an artist suuuuucks, I stopped for a reason! But that ain't the reason. If you are doing real digital art, you already have everything you need to prove it is real. That is the one good thing here.

In these days of clickbait and lazy reporting, an accusation has a lot more visibility than a refutation. It doesn't matter how much proof you post, that accusation will still be the first thing people see when they search your name, and many won't give you the chance to defend yourself, they'll just drop you from consideration and go with a different artist instead.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

In these days of clickbait and lazy reporting, an accusation has a lot more visibility than a refutation. It doesn't matter how much proof you post, that accusation will still be the first thing people see when they search your name, and many won't give you the chance to defend yourself, they'll just drop you from consideration and go with a different artist instead.

I don't think that's true at all, and I don't think you can back that up with any evidence. It's just a different kind of panic-mongering, frankly.

It's very easy, trivial even, to prove that your digital art is real. Accusations can be refuted swiftly and I don't think any artists who didn't use AI art have had their careers harmed. If you disagree, name some. Indeed, the PHB guy got considerable good press from the inaccurate allegations! A lot of people expressed admiration for his art and style and his name got spread around as a guy who wasn't doing AI art, rather than former.

Obviously if some horrible internet person does a personal doxxing witch-hunt on you, they are a bad person and need to be dealt with as such, but that's not really been the issue here.

 

[Morrus]

This is a Catch-22 situation though, isn't it, @Morrus?

Unless people keep making accusations, some of which will - I completely agree - be proven baseless, then we'll gradually see more and more "low detectability" AI art creep into stuff. I'd rather people made bad accusations and then got shown to be wrong than people stopped making accusations.

It's trivially easy to disprove such allegations to a publisher or the like, because as a digital artist, you simply send the the appropriate file that shows how you constructed the art. You already have that file! You needed it to make the art! You don't just delete those! So it's not a big deal imho.


No, dude, I get you're not an artist so you don't understand. But when make digital art, you do this automatically. It's not extra book-keeping for digital artists so don't make up stuff like this. No-one is requiring digital artists to "track and keep every step of the process" - if you were doing digital art you would understand that this inherent to the process. Seriously, if you do a few tutorials, spend a few week fiddling around with GIMP or something and a big lightbulb will come on above your head.

It's not that the artist had meticulously documented this - he just kept pressing save in a file type that records everything you do so you can reverse or change it - which is what GIMP, Photoshop (and Paintshop back in the day) and so on have been doing SINCE THE 1990s! I know this because I used to do digital art - indeed, half my art A-level from the year of our lord 1997 was done digitally!

This is not new. Please don't make up fictional difficulties. People will believe you. I would go as far as to suggest editing your post to prevent anyone in future seeing it and thinking "THOSE POOR ARTISTS!". Yes being an artist suuuuucks, I stopped for a reason! But that ain't the reason. If you are doing real digital art, you already have everything you need to prove it is real. That is the one good thing here.

Not all art is bespoke. Some of it is stock art from a platform like Shutterstock etc, which are commonly used in this industry, especially by smaller publishers. And lots of artists make a living licensing their art as stock. We've been caught out that way before. It happens.

Also, some publishers use a studio or the like for larger batches. They have a reasonable expectation that the studio isn't going to defraud them, but it has happened. In those situations, the publisher doesn't have access to the working files, the studio does. So proving innocence isn't always as trivial as you're portraying. At the point where the publisher is personally overviewing the art process, they might as well be commissioning it themselves.

Additionally, just shouting it out in public on a 'hunch' (which is pretty much what usually happens) is just silly. If you genuinely, genuinely believe something to be AI perhaps the first step would be to contact the publisher directly. But just shrieking "AI!" every time you see a slightly odd-looking object in an art piece is just creating useless noise and not helping the situation at all. It's not helping the artist, it's not helping the publisher, it's not helping the customer.