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​

​

 

[Charlaquin]

In 5 years time nobody would be able to see the differences. Foolish to think otherwise. It would be wise to be adaptable instead.
Also this happened to blue color workers a long time ago. Don’t think it wouldn’t happen for white collar workers.

It was a bad thing then, and it’s a bad thing now.

 

[BigZebra]

Sad but very true. I'm a software engineer, and what I've been seeing WRT to GPT-4 (the successor to chatgpt) is pretty frightening. AI can already out diagnose doctors, outperform fund managers, and generate art or images real enough to fool people. This is the first time where knowledge and creative workers livelihoods are in jeopardy.

We're entering uncharted territory. It's why I've been spending some free time going back to the basics and learning the math behind machine learning (I did it before some 20 years ago, so it's not like it's brand new to me). Any engineer thinking they can just learn the API (Application Programming Interface) for pytorch, tensorflow, transformers (yes, the emoji is really part of the name), etc are going to be in for a rude awakening.

Yup - this is where I'm at as well. I'm an iOS-developer during my day job, and I'm also going back to the basics. In 10 years the IT-landscape will look vastly different.

 

[BigZebra]

It was a bad thing then, and it’s a bad thing now.

I sympathize with your sentiment. But is this really true?
Was it bad that hard cruel manual labor-based jobs were taken over by machines? I don't think the answer is so simple.
ChatGPT-4 and other coming LLM-bases software systems will pretty much make knowledge-based jobs obsolete in 20-50 years I think.
What will be left is the human ingenuity and creativity.
Anyway.....this is probably going off topic. But a very interesting discourse indeed.

 

[Charlaquin]

Amazing post

You’re doing Oghma’s work. Bless you.

 

[Charlaquin]

If nothing else, it seems like AI is uncovering the massive disconnect between what is truly productive for humans, and what we are conditioned to believe is "productive" by our money-obsessed economic overlords.

Nah, it just wants the higher-paying job and is good at persuasive writing

 

[Charlaquin]

Wow, WotC is really controversy adverse these days. Something happen recently that would explain it?

Other than all the controversy they keep tripping over?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

 

[Charlaquin]

I sympathize with your sentiment. But is this really true?

Yes

Was it bad that hard cruel manual labor-based jobs were taken over by machines?

Yes

I don't think the answer is so simple.

I mean, the reasons it was bad are certainly complex. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t still bad.

ChatGPT-4 and other coming LLM-bases software systems will pretty much make knowledge-based jobs obsolete in 20-50 years I think.
What will be left is the human ingenuity and creativity.

Since the majority of people need to work to survive, that would be disastrous for society.

 

[Nellisir]

Since the majority of people need to work to survive, that would be disastrous for society.

Wait, so the conclusion is that AI proliferation will lead to mass unemployment, mass death, and the overall destruction of society?

 

[Vincent55]

I really don't see the issue, D&D is about doing what we want not what you at the corporation think we should do.