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​

​

 

[Justice and Rule]

The Lary Elmore's who really paint by hand with real paint and brush for weeks are long gone (sadly).
I have no problem with AI art, if it looks cool it looks cool ( i know that it's difficult to give credits to the original artitst whose art is used, that is a thing that must be worked out).
Everyone has their eyes now on WOTC, but i asure you that AI art is used by lot's of other developers. Enhancing art is what photshop is doing for years.
This art in question was just enhanced, not stolen buy any artist.
The proces with using concept art from one artist to be used by another is how it's done for years.
i'm curious about the future.

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.

 

[dave2008]

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.

That is not entirely true. You can have AI generate from your own content. An artist could feed it all there own art and it would therefore generate just from their own work. I know this is possible with programs like ChatGPT, I believe it is with the art ones as well. Doing something like that is very similar to using a filter or blur or any other digital with a program like photoshop.

 

[Justice and Rule]

That is not entirely true. You can have AI generate from your own content. An artist could feed it all there own art and it would therefore generate just from their own work. I know this is possible with programs like ChatGPT, I believe it is with the art ones as well. Doing something like that is very similar to using a filter or blur or any other digital with a program like photoshop.

I mean, that's kind of implicitly included in there, but that's also not the real concern of AI art as much as what I describe. Again, I think the fact that Ilya did some AI stuff on his own art isn't bad as much as it makes the pieces honestly worse. But the bigger issues with AI are largely people who are not yourself using your art (or in the case of Hollywood, your voice and image).

 

[Weiley31]

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.

I have indeed seen the art and they seem unatural looking for wolf paws. So ya there's some weirdness going on there.

 

[Weiley31]

The wolf art in case anybody has yet to see it.

 

[Justice and Rule]

There are other pieces that were noticed that have yet to be mentioned. This one, for example, is so obvious that it feels unconscionable that someone could see this and say "Yeah, that should be in a major AAA RPG production."

Seriously, look at the person in the corner and try to figure out what is going on down there.

 

[Mirtek]

IMHO people here have way too much faith in the art standards of John & Jane Doe casual gamer.

Without this thread I'd buy a book with the art above and never notice or question it while reading the new feats and classes

 

[TheLordTB]

Something folks may not be considering is that AI tools like this are trained on other artists work without those artists being compensated.

This results in a situation where someone can undercut the rates of the very artists they are using the AI tool to mimic.

Practical example: Lets say it takes Artist A three days to do a full illustration in their unique style, so they'd bid their work for enough to account for that time. Artist B has an AI tool that they can feed Artist A's work into (found off Artist A's online portfolio) and can use that to take a rough sketch to final quality in under 60 minutes.

Artist A bids for 24 hours (8 hour work days over 3 days)
Artist B bids for 18 hours (45 minute sketch, ~15 minutes playing with AI Tool, then 17 hours worth of pure profit baby, woohoo!)

"Artist" C is like, damn, I could mimic that work with an AI Tool in less then an hour, bid for 10 hours, and still make a big profit for my time.

"Artist" D is like, hell, I want in on this, I'll bid for 5 hours, still a profit for me.

So it goes.

Weird thing: Artists keep telling me that they look at other artists art for inspiration and to learn from other techniques. I really have difficulties seeing the problem. Yeah, AI is bad for artists. But cars also were bad for horse smiths. And DTP was bad for typesetters. And computers were bad for typists. And so on.

 

[TheLordTB]

Something folks may not be considering is that AI tools like this are trained on other artists work without those artists being compensated.

This results in a situation where someone can undercut the rates of the very artists they are using the AI tool to mimic.

Practical example: Lets say it takes Artist A three days to do a full illustration in their unique style, so they'd bid their work for enough to account for that time. Artist B has an AI tool that they can feed Artist A's work into (found off Artist A's online portfolio) and can use that to take a rough sketch to final quality in under 60 minutes.

Artist A bids for 24 hours (8 hour work days over 3 days)
Artist B bids for 18 hours (45 minute sketch, ~15 minutes playing with AI Tool, then 17 hours worth of pure profit baby, woohoo!)

"Artist" C is like, damn, I could mimic that work with an AI Tool in less then an hour, bid for 10 hours, and still make a big profit for my time.

"Artist" D is like, hell, I want in on this, I'll bid for 5 hours, still a profit for me.

So it goes.

Weird thing: Artists keep telling me that they look at other artists art for inspiration and to learn from other techniques. I really have difficulties seeing the problem. Yeah, AI is bad for artists. But cars also were bad for horse smiths. And DTP was bad for typesetters. And computers were bad for typists. And so on.

 

[MockingBird]

As a kid I loved to draw and paint, did it all the way up through college. I badly wanted to make a career out of it. I just didn't know how to put it all together to make a career out of it. I don't think me personally would be okay using AI to enhance my art. I was always pushing to be better, I wanted to have the skill start to finish, for my work to be completely by me. It's hard for me to understand how any artist or creative could be okay with an AI basically completing your work.