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

[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)

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The AI version

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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.