Ruin Explorer
Legend
Sure, but it's extremely likely with a lot of publishers, especially larger ones that you will either get:If you genuinely, genuinely believe something to be AI perhaps the first step would be to contact the publisher directly.
A) No response whatsoever.
B) A flat proforma denial that they use AI art.
Some publishers may forward your email to the art team to check. Others will simply effectively bin it as "customer feedback".
In which case, what is step two? I would suggest the only possible step two in most cases is to publicly comment that you are concerned that this art is AI art and explain the basis of your concern. Obviously you should do so politely and frankly if possible keep the artist's name out of it (unless they solely work in AI art, and nothing else, in which case it is obviously relevant), and focus on the specific piece.
This seems like a rather exaggerated and negative portrayal, using intentionally emotive words like "shrieking" and "useless noise" (something I've been called out for before, so I recognise it!) and seems to be implying people are all jumping at shadows that are absolutely not real.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.
But that's not the case - many of these shadows really do have metaphorical monsters in them! And whilst there are always a few unhelpful shriekers and witch-hunters in any situation, most people have been quite reasonable about this, and have not been throwing accusations around lightly, but rather after close examination of pieces, where they've found stuff that was either suspicious as hell or clearly was AI-generated. Indeed, we've already seen a case where the publisher (WotC, again) publicly denied that a piece used AI art, and was only forced to backtrack after people kept publicly pointing out that it obviously did (the Steampunk room advert).
So I think whilst sure, your first port of call should be the publisher, especially with smaller, more responsive publishers who may well look into it (as opposed to large corporations like WotC), if you get a non-response or a proforma denial of the use of AI art, and you think you have reason to believe the art is AI, I think it's perfectly fine for you to (politely) point this out in a public forum, like Twitter/X. Again I would suggest decorum and decency dictates avoiding the artist's name unless they are an AI art specialist (which has been the case a couple of times).
This is something society is going to have to deal with, and yes it's going to be a little uncomfortable for a while. But remaining silent as AI art creeps in is not better for artists than pointing it out - sometimes inaccurately. It's objectively worse. Again I point out that corporations have already falsely denied using AI art. We cannot trust them to be accurate about this at the first instance (I say accurate instead of honest because I am giving the benefit of the doubt). Clearly even major companies with budget to spare are not doing due diligence, and not even following up after accusations properly. That may be changing but until we've gone a while without any such scandals, I think we need to be on our toes.
Re: buying art from studios sure, and new standards clearly need to be established there. Studios selling art in batches need to certify their art as AI free and there need to contracts with consequences if it turns out that they are being untruthful or inaccurate. This is change that needs to happen. It is not a change that will happen if we all decide to shut up about AI art.
The ideal situation would be for some sort of voluntary formal "not AI" certification to be created, but I do worry that this would manage to be monetized or co-opted by some unscrupulous group, even if it was an open standard (thanks to the tragedy of the commons, many open standards have already been subverted).