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

[Art Waring]

I can see a lawyer arguing that

While I agree with that, it has yet to be seen how this would play out in court. Its current status on google is as I posted above, not applicable for copyright, as they are not made by a human (just stating the situation as it is right now).

I'm mainly posting this so new indie publishers don't get confused in all the conversation surrounding the subject. Some platforms have updated their terms of use for AI art, and as an emerging technology I think its important to stay informed as the laws change.

ATM, if you plan on using AI generated art, its best that you know is pros and cons.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

While I agree with that, it has yet to be seen how this would play out in court. Its current status on google is as I posted above, not applicable for copyright, as they are not made by a human (just stating the situation as it is right now).

The thing is that if a court rules that AI generated images are in fact copyrightable under current law, then they will always have been under copyright and anyone who has used them thinking they were public domain are in for a world of trouble. So it's a good idea to be cautious regardless of what google says.

 

[Art Waring]

The thing is that if a court rules that AI generated images are in fact copyrightable under current law, then they will always have been under copyright and anyone who has used them thinking they were public domain are in for a world of trouble. So it's a good idea to be cautious regardless of what google says.

Again, just putting up the current state of the legal situation, so as it develops, we can stay informed.

As it stands, we have no way of knowing if every piece of AI generated art would retroactively become copyrighted given a change in the law. Unless you have a source? That could become quite problematic for folks using AI generated art.

 

[MoonSong]

Again, just putting up the current state of the legal situation, so as it develops, we can stay informed.

As it stands, we have no way of knowing if every piece of AI generated art would retroactively become copyrighted given a change in the law. Unless you have a source? That could become quite problematic for folks using AI generated art.

The direct antecedent I can think of is digital fonts. In principle, they didn't qualify for copyright protection, but some company -I think Adobe?- went to court and proved that different people would trace the font paths in a different way, and that this was a creative process for which humanity was key. I mean I can't see a way for this argument to hold in favor of giving AI art copyright, if anything, it might be the opposite.

 

[Art Waring]

The direct antecedent I can think of is digital fonts. In principle, they didn't qualify for copyright protection, but some company -I think Adobe?- went to court and proved that different people would trace the font paths in a different way, and that this was a creative process for which humanity was key. I mean I can't see a way for this argument to hold in favor of giving AI art copyright, if anything, it might be the opposite.

That is interesting. Typography is one of my interests so let me do some research...

Here is a short article with some info about the original Adobe lawsuit with another software company. The original 1997 lawsuit was based on the fact that the other company essentially "scraped" their fonts for their own use. Essentially, they settled out of court, and left future cases up to the courts to decide on legality on an individual basis.

Adobe currently allows their fonts to be used for personal or commercial purposes, but they specifically forbid embedding their fonts into other mobile or desktop apps.

I'm not sure how they might proceed with it, but it shows an interesting case for how ai tools could be ruled on in the future. While ai generated art is currently treated as being in the public domain, it is certainly possible that a company might make that change.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I think discussing the copyright status requires making some distinctions, because this is multiple versions of multiple technologies.

It is possible that the royalty-free terms of service of some of these AI art services will be upheld, though given how copyright friendly and public domain apathetic the US courts where the matter will most likely be settled are, I'd bet on those images ending up copyright protected.

Meanwhile, I think the people who actually are serious about making art with this technology for a finished product are going to end up running Stable Diffusion (the license to which makes to claims about the outputs) or the comparable things that will supplant it, on local PCs where they can fine-tune the operations of the program, then manipulate iterations and reprocess them. A single final output of the program will almost never be as good as what could be created by manually compositing together several of the slight iterations of the final output, so there will likely be some substantial transformative use at the end compositing images together, even if somehow the underlying AI art was, improbably, ruled non-copyrightable.

And, of course, I think a lot of art will be created by manually heavily modifying the outputs of all these programs, or incorporating outputs into larger compositions.

In other words, AI art is not and will never be a single monolithic thing, it is several technologies, with different license agreements attached, being used in collaboration with various levels of human manipulation. I think it can safely be assumed that people own a copyright in the things that they created with AI on their own computer, under a permissive license, and substantially altered manually, provided it doesn't infringe excessively on someone else's copyright image. Everything else is up in the air, and going to require some court precedent or new laws to iron out.

 

[Yaarel]

Not about the AI art per-se, but about how supercomputers are advancing every aspect of science.

For astrophysics, here is an amazing simulation of the formation of our moon, hypothesized to have formed 4.5 billion years ago when a Mars-sized planet crashed into planet Earth.

 

[jmartkdr2]

The direct antecedent I can think of is digital fonts. In principle, they didn't qualify for copyright protection, but some company -I think Adobe?- went to court and proved that different people would trace the font paths in a different way, and that this was a creative process for which humanity was key. I mean I can't see a way for this argument to hold in favor of giving AI art copyright, if anything, it might be the opposite.

There was another case where a monkey took a selfie and the owner of the camera tried to claim copyright (sorry if this was already mentioned). Monkey selfie copyright dispute - Wikipedia

There's a note that only human-made stuff can be copyrighted, so the AI itself can be cr'ed but not the output of said AI. But that's a government agency opinion not a legal precedent.

I doubt WotC would use non-copyrighted art. But if it's the best way to get art for your heartbreaker than I guess go for it.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

AI-Created Comic Has Been Deemed Ineligible for Copyright Protection

Reversing an earlier decision, the United States Copyright Office rules that a comic book made using A.I. art is ineligible for copyright protection

www.cbr.com

AI-Created Comic Has Been Deemed Ineligible for Copyright Protection​

Reversing an earlier decision, the United States Copyright Office rules that a comic book made using A.I. art is ineligible for copyright protection

 

[collin]

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

 

[Stormonu]

I've been working lately with generating some AI art for a monster book of mine, because frankly my own drawing ability sucks and I don't have a budget for a professional artist.

My pathetic attempt at drawing an "Avangi" - a revenant back from the dead seeking out its killer(s)

Spoiler

The AI version

Spoiler

How do I compete with that?

In some cases, I've gotten some fantastic results - even unexpected. The more human the subject though, the less likely I'll get what I'm looking for.

 

[Umbran]

At the moment, the issue is less about whether the AI-generated image is protected by copyright. More is whether the AI generated image is itself a violation of copyright. When so many of these engines use a library of extant art without permission as a basis, people using such in serious publishing are at risk of unfortunate surprises.

 

[Dausuul]

The use of human creative works, almost entirely without permission, to train AI which then threatens to replace those human creators is an abomination.

The day we find a way to return a big chunk of the profits from an AI art generator to the human artists whose work it was trained on, I'll be okay with this. Till then, hell no. I would go so far as to boycott 1D&D over that, and work hard at organizing others to do likewise.

 

[Yora]

Given the quality of art in D&D books from the last 20 years.

No, it would probably make no difference.

 

[Art Waring]

At the moment, the issue is less about whether the AI-generated image is protected by copyright. More is whether the AI generated image is itself a violation of copyright. When so many of these engines use a library of extant art without permission as a basis, people using such in serious publishing are at risk of unfortunate surprises.

To further this, due to the ongoing lawsuit against github regarding AI art and coding, they have changed Stable Diffusion (the free UK based open source ai art generator) to not allow artist names to be used. You can still use stable diffusion, but it won't allow artist names as prompts.

The ai is still trained off artists and public data, but now it can't directly reference them in a promt. What this shows is that the free ai models are protecting themselves against future litigation, but the pay-for services like midjourney are still allowing artist names to be used as promts.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Coincidentally enough, yesterday I announced that not only am I not using AI art going forward, I went back and replaced the AI (last minute filler pieces only) art that showed up in Twilight Fables with traditional art. Also, there's another aspect I see here that I don't see being talked about. Even if you set aside the moral argument or the copyright* argument, as a publisher there is risk. We already see conventions (Anime Los Angeles) banning it, and Getty images has banned it as well to sell it. If I have it in my product and more places ban it, then I need to recall my products. Where it gets worrisome for me is that people are trying to sell their AI art passing it off as their own. At the rate of learning, soon you won't be able to tell the difference (many can't right now). So as a publisher I worry I may end up paying for AI art not knowing it. The only thing I can do is ask for layer work. But even then, you have people like this (as recently as a few days ago) who think they can get away with it by manipulating layers in photoshop. He said it was not AI and his own work. We asked him to prove it, and he provided this. Since I know photoshop myself, I was easily able to see how this was fake, but down the road? Who knows.

*Midjourney admitted they use art in their database without asking permission, so it would not surprise me if the final ruling is that AI art is illegal and violates copyright to use.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

At the moment, the issue is less about whether the AI-generated image is protected by copyright. More is whether the AI generated image is itself a violation of copyright. When so many of these engines use a library of extant art without permission as a basis, people using such in serious publishing are at risk of unfortunate surprises.

Exactly right.

We're at most a decade away from some major political bloc (probably the EU) making the "training" of AI on copyright'd data illegal without permission from the copyright holders. Whilst it's very unlikely that will be retroactive in terms of fines/penalties, the best case scenario is that stuff like Midjourney will have to effectively delete their AI and start over with a non-violating one, destroying their business model, at least in the short term.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I don't really mind a smaller company doing it if they can't afford and artist, but I take issue with big companies using it to get out of paying humans who need money to stay alive.

Also, all the theft. Not sure if this is something already covered, but AIs don't take 'inspiration' from the pictures they're fed; they rip them apart, look for commonalities, use filters, and then use the pieces to construct its image. The constituent pieces are still there, to the point that we've seen mashups of artists' signatures in the results.

Technically, it's a transformative work and legal, but there's something not okay about it to me.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I am not making a stand on this. I do think there is (after some looking into it) some shady stuff in the training... but I don't know what it all means. I DO think the people who' own the art that trained it should be both credited and paid... but I have no idea how or how much...

Like if I was (and I am not) a high school art teacher and I make $50,188 a year American (not unreasonably high or low) and I took the pictures off of online and showed them to my talented students those artists would not be paid for it, and if he/she used them as inspiration she/he may but most likely would not really credit them... so it comes down to what the differences (and I know there are even if I can't label them) between the two.

 

[Nitrosaur]

I've been working lately with generating some AI art for a monster book of mine, because frankly my own drawing ability sucks and I don't have a budget for a professional artist.

My pathetic attempt at drawing an "Avangi" - a revenant back from the dead seeking out its killer(s)

Spoiler

View attachment 270215

The AI version

Spoiler

View attachment 270216

How do I compete with that?

In some cases, I've gotten some fantastic results - even unexpected. The more human the subject though, the less likely I'll get what I'm looking for.

I'm gonna be honest, i like your own drawing better than the AI's, yours has way more personality, the AI's is generic af. I guess of you are making a book for potential buyers you would like the higher production value of the AI, but I would be more stoked as a player seeing yours, knowing the dm cared enough.