WotC WotC: 'Artists Must Refrain From Using AI Art Generation'

After it was revealed this week that one of the artists for Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants used artificial intelligence as part of their process when creating some of the book's images, Wizards of the Coast has made a short statement via the D&D Beyond Twitter (X?) account.

The statement is in image format, so I've transcribed it below.

Today we became aware that an artist used AI to create artwork for the upcoming book, Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants. We have worked with this artist since 2014 and he's put years of work into book we all love. While we weren't aware of the artist's choice to use AI in the creation process for these commissioned pieces, we have discussed with him, and he will not use AI for Wizards' work moving forward. We are revising our process and updating our artist guidelines to make clear that artists must refrain from using AI art generation as part of their art creation process for developing D&D art.

-Wizards of the Coast​

Ilya Shkipin, the artist in question, talked about AI's part in his process during the week, but has since deleted those posts.

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 Shlipin​

​

 

[CleverNickName]

I don't understand the problem. If Wizards of the Coast doesn't want the artists they hire to use AI, they don't have to hire artists who use AI. (shrug)

 

[Starfox]

AI makes a lot of craft skills related to pictures obsolete, or at least less commercially viable. But sill it is a tool for artists - it can't create anything on itself. Using Ai to create pictures is a human skill.

 

[orial]

This misses a lot of the actual issues raised by AI art, like the fact that it can't exist without scraping other people's accounts for art to imitate and basically plagiarize. It's not creating something out of nothing, it's basically copying someone else's style using their works and giving them no credit. If AI creators could create a system by which artists could voluntarily submit their works to be scrapped by AI and earn proper residuals off that, then you'd probably see a lot fewer people being angry at it. Instead, there is obvious anger and pushback at a system which uses their art without their consent and gives them no recompense.

Agreed. Something has te be worked out. But in this case it was enhancing.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

I don't understand the problem. If Wizards of the Coast doesn't want the artists they hire to use AI, they don't have to hire artists who use AI. (shrug)

And that's exactly what WotC is doing with this announcement. Artists usually don't disclose what techniques they use up front to potential clients, as most clients only care about the end result, and the price.

 

[Parmandur]

Have you seen it youself, or just go with the flow? Looking at the art, i can't say they are human hands. Looks like paws to me.

Yeah, before the artist fussed up I could allow most of the tells people were pointing out as a photoshop artifact or weird artistic choice...and it even turns out those artifacts like the feet mostly come from the artist, if you loom at his pre-AI version!

 

[Parmandur]

Indeed. They are not human-looking at all.

Theybare weird, but I can see a meeting between Ilya and Emi where he defends the weird things as artistic choices. Why not a Stone Giant with 6 fingers per hand? Why can't these giant magic superwovles have weird paws and eyes?

 

[Faolyn]

Here is Ilya’s art of the dinosaurs before he gave them to the AI

I'm confused. Are the greyscale drawings his? Because if that's the case, that's terrible--he's doing a rough sketch and claiming he did a finished product. Or did he actually paint the colored art and just use an AI image as reference?

 

[J.Quondam]

Out of curiosity, are there any cases yet of artists with unusual styles (or less experienced artists) being accused of using AI because their natural work looks "wrong" to certain observers?

 

[Parmandur]

Out of curiosity, are there any cases yet of artists with unusual styles (or less experienced artists) being accused of using AI because their natural work looks "wrong" to certain observers?

I've seen some of that on Reddit, yeah.

 

[J.Quondam]

I've seen some of that on Reddit, yeah.

Ugh. That was inevitable, I suppose.