D&D General Would It Matter To You if D&D Books Were Illustrated by AI Instead of Humans?

Would It Matter To You if D&D Books Were Illustrated by AI Instead of Humans?

  • No

    Votes: 58 29.0%
  • Yes

    Votes: 142 71.0%

MoonSong

Rules-lawyering drama queen but not a munchkin
As an artist, speaking from experience, there is no universal "artistic process," every artist has their own unique process.

If an individual finds inspiration from an AI, so be it, there is nothing stopping them from using that creative process to make art.

If an artist was classically trained, so be it, but just because they learned to do it a certain way does not mean that it is the best way, or the only way of doing things.

Some artists use visual aids or other methonds that some might consider unconventional. Tim Bradstreet, a veteran of the RPG and the comics industry, uses live models for all of his pieces, using the photograph, lighting, and his own artistic process to create a work of art.
Heck, your inspiration can be a stain on the wall... I misunderstood your point, when you said basis I thought you meant basis as in the first sketch that brings the layout, composition and so on. Not inspiration. Though I would question a bit if AI "art" was the only inspiration -because it seems like it would be increasingly narrow and cookie cutter-.
 

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EzekielRaiden

Follower of the Way
I'd love to have an AI that did the first colloring of artwork. The first layer of color is a very time consuming process and it is normally done by assistants. I don't have the budget for assistants, so having an AI do it would help me work very quickly.
Sure, that sounds like a useful tool for an artist to use. An ordinary person wouldn't get much benefit out of an AI that does the base flat colors. If the AI is designed to be flexible and to make it very easy to adjust individual colors once it generates a file, that would be even better, a tool for quickly and efficiently completing a tedious but necessary task, like a washing machine does.

The problem, of course, is that it would be expensive to make such a tool. Much more expensive than to make something like DALL-E, where it's just trained on a crap load of images and produces whole pieces at once, rather than just doing that one step. And, of course, it would be much more profitable to make DALL-E type tools and sell the tool (or art) to folks who want instant art, rather than to build this tool that only a small number of low-budget clients would be interested in buying in the first place.

Which is what makes this whole thing so frustrating. The incentives specifically lie in the area of doing crappy things to real human beings, like getting all your art from an AI for pennies on the dollar compared to what you'd get from actual artists.
 

EzekielRaiden

Follower of the Way
I absolutely agree, "AI" art as it is at the moment can only "create" pieces that are derived from preexisting works.
The current technology being used cannot ever truly create anything new. It is very literally only recombining elements it has been taught exist. It can combine those elements in surprising ways, but it cannot invent new elements to put into the composition. If you ask it to give you something it has truly zero training to cover, it will give you gibberish. E.g. if 2024 D&D introduces a brand new race called fnords, which have two krangles on their forehead and fluorescent purple skin, then an AI trained to make D&D character portraits will simply be incapable of producing that race.

You would need to create an AI that actually handles semantic content, not just syntactic content, for it to be able to truly invent new things.
 

Art Waring

halozix.com
The current technology being used cannot ever truly create anything new. It is very literally only recombining elements it has been taught exist. It can combine those elements in surprising ways, but it cannot invent new elements to put into the composition. If you ask it to give you something it has truly zero training to cover, it will give you gibberish. E.g. if 2024 D&D introduces a brand new race called fnords, which have two krangles on their forehead and fluorescent purple skin, then an AI trained to make D&D character portraits will simply be incapable of producing that race.

You would need to create an AI that actually handles semantic content, not just syntactic content, for it to be able to truly invent new things.
Not to mention, that the AI will constantly need to keep recombining elements from existing artists, and the more artists that leave the pool of available working artists, the less it will have to compose AI art from.

ATM it relies completely on the preexisting work of living artists. If it pushes artists out of their fields, it will look like its working, up until the rubicon is reached where "AI" can no longer bite from artists who no longer exist.

Its pretty scary for artists who rely on their work to keep food on the table.
 

An online distributor called One Bookshelf that DriveThruRPG partners with has now added the following to its product standards guidelines, requiring that products with art created by AI must be labeled as such.

One Bookshelf said:
Third-Party Tool- and AI-Generated Images

All product listings that feature art generated by a third-party source such as Inkarnate or Dungeondraft, or an AI-generation tool such as ArtBreeder, Midjourney, etc. are required to utilize the appropriate identifying filter (found under "Creation Method" in the Format section of title filters).

Titles containing any art rendered by AI-generated tools must also display the following disclaimer in their product description:

This product contains assets that were procedurally generated with the aid of creative software(s) powered by machine learning.

Titles that do not comply are subject to removal from the marketplace. Repeat offenders may have their publishing permissions revoked.

I wonder if part of the reasoning behind this is One Bookshelf wanting to cover themselves in case of future legal developments regarding AI generated images so that they can quickly identify things sold through them using it.
 

EzekielRaiden

Follower of the Way
This was the most diTerlizzi-esque thing I could manage with my afternoon's experience with MidJourney:
View attachment 260098

I don't know if it filters out requests for the style of specific living artists, or if it just couldn't find enough of his art to get the style. But since I feel his planescape art has obvious Arthur Rackham influence I specified that instead, and just requested the most DiTerlizzi of all subjects, an elf girl relaxing in skimpy armor.

But fantasy artists aren't going out of business anytime soon. AI art can, after a few tries manage art of human (and human adjacent) subjects in a fantasy setting, albeit usually with some complications about items carried by them which it really can't figure out the rules for (the objects this lady had in her lap make no sense). An artist skilled enough to do touch-ups and corrections could get a lot of mileage out of it for such things. BUT even the most basic of fantasy creatures are too varied in the representations it's searching through to get satisfying output (although I think the output is very useful for brainstorming or creating rough versions to be redone by a proper artist). It just can't figure out the rules for things that only exist in people's imaginations, which is a huge part of what is needed for D&D books.

Behold, the results of my attempt to use similar means as those I used above to create a picture of a dragon flying over a fantasy city (these were some of the better results):

View attachment 260099
Yeah, this is pretty typical. Now, in fairness, the easily accessed (read: free) AIs are usually inferior models rather than the best in the business, so it can be tempting to draw strident conclusions. But it really does have some issues with a variety of stuff people would often want to see, dragons and other monstrous creatures being a primary example.

An online distributor called One Bookshelf that DriveThruRPG partners with has now added the following to its product standards guidelines, requiring that products with art created by AI must be labeled as such.



I wonder if part of the reasoning behind this is One Bookshelf wanting to cover themselves in case of future legal developments regarding AI generated images so that they can quickly identify things sold through them using it.
Almost guaranteed to be a CYOA clause, yeah. Honestly it's a smart move on their part.
 

Art Waring

halozix.com
I wonder if part of the reasoning behind this is One Bookshelf wanting to cover themselves in case of future legal developments regarding AI generated images so that they can quickly identify things sold through them using it.
That is exactly my concern, because this is newly emerging technology the laws have not had time to catch up, They are covering themselves from any future liabilities from AI art and its legality in a commercial product.

If you use AI art, the laws may change at a later time, which could potentially harm creators and their work.
 

Umbran

Mod Squad
Staff member
You folks are talking as if AI results are magic, and fall out of the aether for free.

There are a bunch of very talented people behind those AIs - I would expect they need to be very talented at code, as well as at art. And they've had to work very hard to get the results they do.

A person who is talented at art, using their skills to produce art... is an artist, no?

Edit: and before anyone gets at me about how their art is based on other art - I will direct you at the idea of copyright. Copyright has a limit so other folks can eventually base other art upon a given work. Licensing is similar. So, we are consuming art based on other art all the time.
 

Sacrosanct

Legend
Almost guaranteed to be a CYOA clause, yeah. Honestly it's a smart move on their part.
Not the way they worded it. Including things like Inkcarnate? Their phrasing implies that anything digitally assisted needs to have that disclaimer, including anything made in photoshop, InDesign, ProCreate, and others. Which is ironic, because they themselves push templates for you to use, using those tools.

They are going to end up 95% of their products with that disclaimer. Not very well thought out at all.
 

EzekielRaiden

Follower of the Way
Not the way they worded it. Including things like Inkcarnate? Their phrasing implies that anything digitally assisted needs to have that disclaimer, including anything made in photoshop, InDesign, ProCreate, and others. Which is ironic, because they themselves push templates for you to use, using those tools.

They are going to end up 95% of their products with that disclaimer. Not very well thought out at all.
I meant the underlying idea. Had not considered the implications there, so yes, the implementation is bad, but the notion of asking creators to specify in advance that they used AI art generation is good.
 


EzekielRaiden

Follower of the Way
You folks are talking as if AI results are magic, and fall out of the aether for free.

There are a bunch of very talented people behind those AIs - I would expect they need to be very talented at code, as well as at art. And they've had to work very hard to get the results they do.

A person who is talented at art, using their skills to produce art... is an artist, no?
Sure. But the rewards of the work will go to the tech company, generally speaking. Unless you mean to say that journalists and authors are a large portion of people working inside Google and other AI platform places....which I highly highly doubt. Part of the problem is that you don't need to be an artist to train an AI on other people's art.

Edit: and before anyone gets at me about how their art is based on other art - I will direct you at the idea of copyright. Copyright has a limit so other folks can eventually base other art upon a given work. Licensing is similar. So, we are consuming art based on other art all the time.
Again the issue is not the provenance. I am in fact actually very much in favor of reducing copyright term limits. My issue is that these tools are almost guaranteed to get used by greedy corporations that want to cut costs wherever they can. If you can generate halfway decent art using DALL-E at one-tenth the cost (and time) of hiring an actual living artist, you do it, hands down, no question. Because the bottom line is everything, as we have seen from numerous problems arising over the past 30-50 years.

Automation can be a lovely thing. I made a comparison between a proposed "flat colors" tool and a washing machine earlier and I very much meant it. Washing machines have saved millions, perhaps billions, of people thousands of hours of labor over the course of their lives. Such tools are a good thing.

My concern is greedy corporations abandoning an industry that they already treat extremely poorly and exploitatively, chasing lower costs no matter the human cost, and as a result giving us more limited, samey, cookie-cutter art liable to be plagued by racist tropes and presentation because AI just use what we give them and there are major racist biases in both the data provided and the ways that data is used. (See: the image sharpener AI that turned pictures of black people into white ones. Including Barack Obama.)
 

nyvinter

Explorer
There are a bunch of very talented people behind those AIs - I would expect they need to be very talented at code, as well as at art.
That do you base that on? What I've seen of the AI art companies are that they're started by people who want to be good at art but quit on day two because no noticeable skill change*. The machine learning software analyses what's popular in the image set, but it has no compositional weighting that I'd expect someone who was knowledgeable in art would put in.

*) Just look at all the rallying cries of "finally freeing art from those pesky artists!"
 

Stormonu

Legend
Somewhat...

I watched the new Beavis & Butthead movie. Despite the artwork being "better" (in that it was made using modern methods,) it took something away from the feel of the show.

This isn't limited to AI, but I find that a lot of contemporary art looks too clean. It's lacking something.

I don't know how to explain it, but I find less-perfect artwork more enjoyable.

That doesn't mean that I want bad artwork. But there's something about computerized art (and movie CGI) which doesn't look quite right. I don't know how to explain why or what seems off about it, but it's something.
I think what you are referring to is the "uncanny valley" effect. The artwork too closely mirrors the object that it reflects that it sits in an uncomfortable space between realistically mirroring the subject matter but being "off" at the same time.
 

Sacrosanct

Legend
AI art is a tricky thing. It's a conversation I see all the time in my woodworking groups re: tools. A lot of old timers get salty when someone makes something using a CNC machine as that's not "real" woodworking, only to be met with, "Unless you make everything with a rock, you're using tools as well. We all use tools, just different ones."

I think things like MidJourney are like that. I'm a bit (stressing a bit) of an artist myself, and most artists I know use tools like Procreate, and in those tools, we use things like blending effects, layers, etc. I'm not taking physical paint and mixing it to get a blend effect like I do when I paint minis--I'm letting the software do that work for me.

So part of me thinks AI art is to art world as CNC is to woodworking.
 

MoonSong

Rules-lawyering drama queen but not a munchkin
There are a bunch of very talented people behind those AIs - I would expect they need to be very talented at code, as well as at art. And they've had to work very hard to get the results they do.
No, Neural networks are basically pure math constructs. People creating a neural network bot don't really need to know -or bother- with the specifics of the thing the bot will work with. It isn't trivial per se, it takes a lot of code monking and creativity to make good bots, but the bot itself is a huge group of relatively simple units, and the actual final products depend solely on the training the bot has and the computer power that can be given to the bot. Source art major and Math/CS dropout.
 

MoonSong

Rules-lawyering drama queen but not a munchkin
AI art is a tricky thing. It's a conversation I see all the time in my woodworking groups re: tools. A lot of old timers get salty when someone makes something using a CNC machine as that's not "real" woodworking, only to be met with, "Unless you make everything with a rock, you're using tools as well. We all use tools, just different ones."
The CNC is still working using a design that a human created. A person had to take the decisions. AI art is instead replacing the human, not that there aren't humans giving maintenance to the bot, but they aren't making any decisions on the products of the bot. (However, I think it might be possible to have a bot that produces 3d models that in turn can be CNC'd/3d printed)
 

Sacrosanct

Legend
The CNC is still working using a design that a human created. A person had to take the decisions. AI art is instead replacing the human, not that there aren't humans giving maintenance to the bot, but they aren't making any decisions on the products of the bot. (However, I think it might be possible to have a bot that produces 3d models that in turn can be CNC'd/3d printed)
No, if you want a result that is anything other than atrocious, you have to input certain commands and parameters into AI art, just like you do with a CNC machine. You have to know at least a little about what you're doing to use MidJourney or other AI programs effectively, just like any other tool

It's the difference between this:

1662231121511.png


And this:
1662231142349.png
 

doctorbadwolf

Heretic of The Seventh Circle
AI art is a tricky thing. It's a conversation I see all the time in my woodworking groups re: tools. A lot of old timers get salty when someone makes something using a CNC machine as that's not "real" woodworking, only to be met with, "Unless you make everything with a rock, you're using tools as well. We all use tools, just different ones."

I think things like MidJourney are like that. I'm a bit (stressing a bit) of an artist myself, and most artists I know use tools like Procreate, and in those tools, we use things like blending effects, layers, etc. I'm not taking physical paint and mixing it to get a blend effect like I do when I paint minis--I'm letting the software do that work for me.

So part of me thinks AI art is to art world as CNC is to woodworking.
Absolutely this.

Imagine if you could just talk to Procreate and it would interpret your requested effect, and then ask if the result is what you intended.

It’s a tool. A very cool one, that lowers the barrier to entry and potentially expands what is possible to create. Imagine an artist create a work where the “AI” process of iteration and adding the resulting works back into the algorythm over to time, is part of the process.

Imagine an advanced art assistant that you can set up to record something, and “knows” how to link associated concepts like emotions and colors, feeling of movement from certain types of shapes, staccato rhythm represented visually, etc, and then translate a conversation into a piece of visual art.

These are all potential works of art that are enabled by this technology.

Now expand the scope. You are paying to have a house built, and your architect asks you a series of questions, and rapid fire shows you rooms and hallways and layouts, 2d and 3D, in hyper-detail, eventually constructing your exact dream house. The process still requires an architect with judgement who values human life and happiness, and it might always require at least review by a person, but what is practically plausible expands with the addition of this technology.
 

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