AI-Generated Art Banned from Future 'Dungeons & Dragons' Books After Fan Uproar (geekwire.com) 81
A Dungeons & Dragons expansion book included AI-generated artwork. Fans on Twitter spotted it before the book was even released (noting, among other things, a wolf with human feet). An embarrassed representative for Wizards of the Coast then tweeted out an announcement about new guidelines stating explicitly that "artists must refrain from using AI art generation as part of their creation process for developing D&D art." GeekWire reports:
The artist in question, Ilya Shkipin, is a California-based painter, illustrator, and operator of an NFT marketplace, who has worked on projects for Renton, Wash.-based Wizards of the Coast since 2014. Shkipin took to Twitter himself on Friday, and acknowledged in several now-deleted tweets that he'd used AI tools to "polish" several original illustrations and concept sketches. As of Saturday morning, Shkipin had taken down his original tweets and announced that the illustrations for Glory of the Giants are "going to be reworked..."
While the physical book won't be out until August 15, the e-book is available now from Wizards' D&D Beyond digital storefront.
Wizards of the Coast emphasized this won't happen again. About this particular incident, they noted "We have worked with this artist since 2014 and he's put years of work into books 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."
GeekWire adds that the latest D&D video game, Baldur's Gate 3, "went into its full launch period on Tuesday. Based on metrics such as its player population on Steam, BG3 has been an immediate success, with a high of over 709,000 people playing it concurrently on Saturday afternoon."
While the physical book won't be out until August 15, the e-book is available now from Wizards' D&D Beyond digital storefront.
Wizards of the Coast emphasized this won't happen again. About this particular incident, they noted "We have worked with this artist since 2014 and he's put years of work into books 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."
GeekWire adds that the latest D&D video game, Baldur's Gate 3, "went into its full launch period on Tuesday. Based on metrics such as its player population on Steam, BG3 has been an immediate success, with a high of over 709,000 people playing it concurrently on Saturday afternoon."
AI Art (Score:3)
There are two different and distinct ways to use AI art.
One is just to type in what you want and accept the complete generation.
The other is to make a sketch, and transform that into the desired art, using tools such as inpainting to fix up problematic areas.
Re:AI Art (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: AI Art (Score:2)
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If it's AI generated, there's no copyright problem, because there is no copyright. AI-generated images are public domain.
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I suspect the real issue is making art that doesn't fucking suck. If it didn't fucking suck, then no one would suspect it was made by AI. Simple.
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That helps, but unfortunately for the time being stable diffusion and variants have a very "AI art" look to them. Much has been written about how AI can adapt things into other styles but only to a point. Everything it generates has a certain look to it that you don't need to be particularly well versed in generative art to spot. And I'm not talking about fucked up hands and wavy lines in the backgrounds. When people see AI art it tends to go through the same sequence of "oh, that's amazing!" at a casual gl
What seems to be the problem? (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean, aside of the wolf with human feet. But a well generated image by a computer isn't something that I'd consider bad or "wrong" in some way. Sure, the artwork should be curated and checked for errors, but the artwork itself, quite seriously, if it's human or AI made... Maybe one would have to see if there's really a noticeable difference.
On the other hand, and I hope we can agree on that at least, we could improve our RP mechanics considerably if we run them past an AI. Imagine the countless hours of playtesting we can save by having AI play through the mechanics over and over and over to give us a better and more balanced system with fewer abusable loopholes.
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It's all just plagiarized. That's a problem.
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I don't see that in the summary, care to elaborate? Did he steal the AI generated images or how?
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I think what he is referring to is the fact that the AI art generators are trained on copyrighted material. They are technically plagiarizing other artists. There have been court cases about this when an AI has produced very obvious ripoffs of specific artists.
That is just one side of the problem. The other is that you cannot - at the moment - list an AI as an artist or copyright owner. Art produced by an AI is in a copyright limbo, and to use it in a commercial product is a risk you have to acknowledge.
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There is a difference and there isn't.
If an actual human artist copies another's work exactly, and presents it as his own, you are likely looking at various forms of infringements. Here the AI is no different from a human artist.
But there is a difference to producing digital art with tools like digital art studios. In those programs, the artist typically has to actually do something, like pose figures, set up the scene, set up the lights and camera angles, adjust the colors and so on. With an AI, you are ef
Re: What seems to be the problem? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re: What seems to be the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
Artists are also trained on copyrighted material. Diffusion models contain zero of the copyrighted works, so there's no plagiarism (at least, no more than when a human makes art) and no copyright infringement. That doesn't mean that people or organizations shouldn't put limitations on its use, but it does mean that you can't just cling to pat justifications based on copyright to ban it.
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Oh ? Then surely you should post a link to the original pictures that were copied.
Re:What seems to be the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's all just plagiarized. That's a problem.
The image generation portion of AI art generation? IDK that doesn't sound like, if I understand your focus here, any reasonable definition of plagiarism would apply to the image generation stage... or the training either, not on its own at least.
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Re: What seems to be the problem? (Score:2)
" On top of that, multiple research papers proved that genAI models can directly output a recognizable copy of the training material when prompted correctly,"
Recognizable, kind of. Not enough to be considered a derivative work, though, which is based on recognizable elements...
Re: What seems to be the problem? (Score:5, Funny)
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Ehhh
That only really seems to apply to artists using AI tools that trained on billions of images.
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A human artists brings their own talent and life experience to every new artwork. An AI can be trained to reproduce a particular art style with only functional additional input (e.g. enough to understand the prompt and basic rules of composition).
That said, even human artists can run afoul of copyright rules. There was a case where a photographer took a picture of a London bus on a bridge, and another photog sued him for copying his composition. Certain art styles might be considered "trade dress", and thus
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Well they shouldn't.
humans aren't AI. you look at other art does not mean you will copy it on a later date verbatim. if that were to be true, tourists would have been master painters by now.
most (traditional) artists are in fact encouraged early on to visit galleries and museums to look and study - and if possible copy on site - master paintings because most suck very badly at too many things, most of all composition.
human artists extrapolate; if they "get inspired" by something they will often produce some
Re: What seems to be the problem? (Score:2)
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I have no idea how humans truly learn. But am aware initial AI was inspired as such. All I am saying any aspiring artist *should* look at good art as a way of learning without any fear of reprisal. Because the chances of accidentally coming up with a masterwork that strongly resembles a prior ....is basically nil.
Humans do not learn by "looking" at things only. They are crap memory-photographers. But they will by physically reconstructing the very thing, not once, but several times. And not just by followin
Re: What seems to be the problem? (Score:2)
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AI trains on copyright-free images is totally fine.
How they conducted their business previously - absolutely and totally not fine.
Re: What seems to be the problem? (Score:2)
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Invalid.
Why not reach out to, consult the creator?
Why not be creative yourself, come up with better alternatives?
These things will dry up the talent pool fast, one day there'll be no true creatives left, only bad regurgitative AI.
Re: What seems to be the problem? (Score:2)
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If you try and copy a style of an artist, by hand, most if not all, will be quite flattered.
If you prompt an AI to generate such and such, but in the style of ... some living artist, most will be pretty upset.
Proper artists want to share their vision, their aesthetics, but in a way that confers mutual growth, opposed to that which is soulless, mere profit-driven, or artificial.
Re: What seems to be the problem? (Score:2)
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Making statements is not art, it's propaganda. ,what is beauty? what is love? what is truth? and so forth
But sure, what is art? I guess then
If you want proper art skills there is a free website for that.
Hope this helps. [freearttraining.com]
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Until the courts weigh in, that remains to be seen.
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I mean, aside of the wolf with human feet.
I wonder if the AI was trying to respond to furries plus all the people on image boards who request "post feet pic plz".
Re:What seems to be the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, aside of the wolf with human feet. But a well generated image by a computer isn't something that I'd consider bad or "wrong" in some way. Sure, the artwork should be curated and checked for errors, but the artwork itself, quite seriously, if it's human or AI made... Maybe one would have to see if there's really a noticeable difference.
So I'll buy the best Van Gogh replica I can, and I'll give you that replica (new frame, fresh new paint with unfaded colours) plus $1000 in exchange for your original Van Gogh.
I mean you're getting a painting that's just as good if not better (did I mention the fresh paint makes the colours more vibrant) plus some cash, in exchange for an older worn version of the same painting.
How can you say no?!?
If, like most people, you do say no, it's probably because you consider the relationship with the artist to be an important part of the work. And you agree that the older painting's relationship with Theo Van Gogh is worth quite a bit more than the newer painting's relationship with the talented artist who painted it.
The same rule applies to D&D books. Sure it's not as important, but the origin of the art can matter as just as much as the art itself. The idea that a drawing came from the imagination and painstaking skilled labour of an artist is more significant than the idea that the drawing came from some prompts given to an AI model.
Re:What seems to be the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
This comparison is deeply flawed. I may very well prefer the "new" version of the Van Gogh from an aesthetic perspective. However I would still say no to your deal simply because of the monetary value of the original artwork, which is based on the perception/value held by other people, not me.
Even if you are as unusual a person as you claim to be you still seem to agree that the identity of the artist is really really important to the perception/value of the work. Surely the people buying the D&D book wanted and expected human drawn illustrations.
So why is the perceived value that Van Gogh gives his paintings important, yet the perceived value that this artist was supposed to give his works not important?
To make the comparison even less valid, Van Gogh had no access to generative AI tools that I'm aware of. Who knows what he may have produced if he did.
I'd complain that feels like a Wookie defence... but I'm not sure it's even a good one since it's predicated on dubious assumptions.
The artist claims he used the AI tools to "polish" his works, do we really think he didn't noticed that they "polished" human feet on a wolf and mucked up the hand?
It seems pretty clear that instead of spending the hours he normally would to make a drawing he just started typing prompts into an AI image generator and stopped when he thought he had something good.
This is more akin to Van Gogh getting a commission, and deciding he was too busy, so asking Van Phil to paint instead and then passing it back to the client as a Van Gogh (which would be weird, since Van Gogh couldn't actually sell paintings in his lifetime, but I digress).
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I don't disagree that the artist f***ed up royally by essentially 'phoning it in' for this piece of artwork. That's not an issue with AI as such though, that's an issue with the artist. He could just as easily have outsourced his work to a LCOL country like the Philippines, and received an equally poor result - no disrespect to Filipino artists, it's just a hypothetical example.
And this claim of "Surely the people buying the D&D book wanted and expected human drawn illustrations." isn't demonstrated a
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I don't disagree that the artist f***ed up royally by essentially 'phoning it in' for this piece of artwork. That's not an issue with AI as such though, that's an issue with the artist. He could just as easily have outsourced his work to a LCOL country like the Philippines, and received an equally poor result - no disrespect to Filipino artists, it's just a hypothetical example.
True, through regardless of quality I think the Filipino artists cheat would also have been bad, though not quite as bad since it's still a human author.
And this claim of "Surely the people buying the D&D book wanted and expected human drawn illustrations." isn't demonstrated anywhere.
Personally, I don't think the desire for human-drawn illustrations in material where those illustrations could reasonably be considered secondary to the core content, matters as much to people as you may think.
There are several examples in this thread alone where multiple people have posted that they consider an AI-drawn illustration to be just as valid (in this context!), as a hand-drawn illustration, minus the issue of feet of course.
True, though I think it's a pretty defensible claim that many people do care about the authorship, otherwise there wouldn't have been as much of an uproar as there was.
There will always be those that care deeply, but they may very well be (and imo, probably are) in the minority. I'm not completely certain however. Can you be?
Long term, it's hard to say what the equilibrium is. Definitely there's going to be "AI Tools" where the artist anything but the creator by any definition to a monkey typing prompts.
In this c
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Surely the people buying the D&D book wanted and expected human drawn illustrations.
I want fitting illustrations that work with the style of the book I read.
I can't really say that I care too much who (or what) created them. I couldn't name a single RPG artist to be honest, even though behind me is a wall of RPG books.
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I don't care about the relationship to the artist, but I know there are some people out there who pay a lot more than 1000 bucks for that painting. I don't get why, but then again, I already didn't get why people get worked up over that SINGLE ONE EXISTING Magic card that was found recently and is sold for a million or something like that.
Again, the reason why I would not agree with this deal is because I know I can sell that painting for more than 1000 bucks. This is not the case here. I don't have a paint
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It's just a matter of perception. What people can't stand is the notion of being 'deceived,' in this context by inferior AI art rather than quality human art. AI art IMO lacks a subtle emotional resonance that a good human artist can create. The public at large isn't great at picking up on this consciously, just a subconscious feeling perhaps that something is off... circling back to the notion of being deceived. If a great artist used AI for a sketch and then used it as a base for his own work, nobody
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I question that inferior. I have seen some AI generated images and I have seen some artists' work. Inferiority of the AI work is not necessarily what comes to mind when I think of the difference.
I agree that a picture done by AI has to be examined for flaws. And this is what probably wasn't done here, or very likely nobody would have noticed. But whether it's inferior to human generated paintings is very debatable.
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you'll see it more clearly if you go to an art museum and spend time with, eg, 19th century oil paintings. The techniques are more or less modern (proportion, anatomy, perspective, etc) but many/most of them evoke emotion. A master artist once said: most think that a museum quality painting is simply a matter of technique - one builds the skill and then executes the piece. Yet many have the technical skill; few make it into the museum, it is not that easy.
As an advanced beginner painting I might get my
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Well, then I guess it's a bit like food. For the gourmet, haute cuisine it is. But the plebs that we are can eat fast food without having the urge to throw up.
Guess it's the same with art. Some people can appreciate it. But the masses will just want some nice looking pictures and that's it.
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Even the masses know fast food is shit. It used to be cheap, now it's 100% marketing-driven using the addiction model. A Burger King report once referred to its best customers as 'Heavy Users.'
The flaw in your analogy is that fast food actually is addictive. AI art is only interesting because it's a novelty (and keep in mind that 99% of people who see it are tech worshippers with malnourished souls who are just looking for the next new thing to fill the unfillable black hole within).
Don't Tell Them (Score:2)
And they will never know the difference. Art is in the eye of the beholder.
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And they will never know the difference. Art is in the eye of the beholder.
Well in this case the artist didn't tell the fans and they still knew the difference because the artist was to damn lazy to fix the AI glitches. If artists are going to get lazy and flog AI generated crap off on people at a premium as something they conceived of themselves drew by hand, and not something they just milked out of an algorithm and flipped straight to the customer, they can at least make a token attempt at covering their tracks.
Re:Don't Tell Them (Score:4, Insightful)
"Beholder". I see what you did there. ;)
Call Rob Liefeld! (Score:3)
He's the new DND feet guy.
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Even he is a "real artist", how many other artists can he effectively push out of the market by overwhelming publishers with volume and low prices?
Re: People don't like AI artwork because it is che (Score:2)
If he can do that, then all this stuff that is supposedly sacred... Isn't.
It might still be important to artists, but it's clearly not important to the masses, and they make the decisions.
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instant red flag: (Score:5, Insightful)
and operator of an NFT marketplace
Instant red flag.
Everybody needs to watch this documentary [youtube.com] and avoid getting suckered into the whole crypto ponzi scheme.
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Nobody with any common sense needs to watch that video! Crypto is a scam for intelligent people. NFT is like a parody scam for people too inept to bother with the lottery or Nigerian Princes
WotC/Hasbro make a 100% corporate RPG (Score:3)
These guys have always been corporate shills. Even TSR has a lot of issues with profits at the expensive of creative expression. We've been complaining about these guys in the table top industry for decades, they are the biggest and also the least professional publisher.
What's wrong with AI art if the quality is good? On the surface, nothing. But we know how Hasbro is. They'll publish garbage the moment you stop hounding their ass. And we'll get some goofy pictures of hangs with the wrong number of fingers buried in some reference book. And the shills for D&D will argue that it's not a big deal because it's just one or two pictures in some obscure part of the book. Then they'll quietly pretend this is just normal and was always the case when it's AI mistakes are a problem in every new book.
Seriously, just buy a retroclone of an earlier edition. Or pick up one of the many light weight modern RPGs for a few dollars. Or join a fully open project like Basic Fantasy RPG and use their PDFs for free as well as submit your own fixes to the community project or even add your own expansions and share them. (get familiar with OpenOffice and Subversion)
Re:WotC/Hasbro make a 100% corporate RPG (Score:5, Insightful)
Once you've played a few games and are familiar with the concepts... the best thing you can do is set aside ALL the rule books and expansion packs and just play with a good DM.
All the books do (other than make money for the publisher) is encourage rules-lawyering, min-maxing, and munchkining. If you want a party of murder-hobos competing for XP like there's a winning score, go ahead and collect rule books.
Play the game like a co-operative storytelling excercise with some dice thrown in for randomizing, and you'll have a lot more fun.
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At that point what's the difference between what you describe and playing make believe in the backyard?
If all you're looking for is pure narrative I suppose one might enjoy what you're describing but there's very real reasons the creators of D&D and every other RPG didnt just stick with playing in their backyard. The same can be said of players as well, hence spending quite a bit of money on books when they already had perfectly good games of make believe from their childhood.
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>At that point what's the difference between what you describe and playing make believe in the backyard?
The table, the dice, and the snacks. D&D WITH the books is still 'playing make believe in the backyard', only with books.
Putting aside the official source books doesn't mean you've forgotten about elves, dwarves, and halflings. It doesn't mean you've forgotten about fighters and rogues, and magic users. It also doesn't mean you've forgotten about the standard monsters and that maybe a lich dwell
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Sounds an awful lot like playing imagination games like when I was a kid.
To each their own but I've done the narrative only, zero game book thing myself on long road trips with friends when making full characters and using the books isnt practical and not a one of us have ever asked if we could do as such for our normal sessions so I'm finding your "this is the best way to play" narrative doubtful as it doesnt match my experience playing a variety of table top RPGs in a variety of genres.
Furthermore, your p
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Whereas I'd say YOU are playing with the wrong people if you need the books. Or at least, you're not the right people for playing without them.
In the end, it's about having a fun social experience, so whatever works for you... but in my opinion you're offloading your imagination to a committee trying to maximize their profits, not your enjoyment.
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Whereas I'd say YOU are playing with the wrong people if you need the books.
As I said, been there, done that. It's fun when there isnt an alternative but is a poor substitute for playing with structure.
but in my opinion you're offloading your imagination to a committee trying to maximize their profits, not your enjoyment.
And in my own you're missing out on everything playing with structure brings to the table relative to what we used to do as children. This is the same as the physical games kids play giving way to sports with defined rules as one gets older. Not everyone was happy with this change over to rules based games but it is the general progression of things.
Structure doesnt mean not using on
Re: WotC/Hasbro make a 100% corporate RPG (Score:3)
What all the rule books actually do is promote munchkinism and provide a mediocre substitute for imagination on the part of the DM. Just one good game of Amber DRPG and you will see what I'm talking about. Unfortunately this requires a truly good GM and most aren't.
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If books promoted a negative experience for most folks relative to sitting around playing imagination than the table top RPG industry wouldnt exist. Everyone playing in it would have just kept playing their childhood games of imagination instead of choosing to buy a bunch of expensive books with rules they have to spend time learning and then teach others.
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At that point what's the difference between what you describe and playing make believe in the backyard?
While everyone is free to play table top roleplaying games in the way that they wish. My preference is for it to be a game of make believe. It's a social activity where you can improv, invent, create, and share with other people. It has elements of collaborative storytelling (if you've ever done one of those around the campfire storytelling games) and elements of improv, but far less demanding than improv.
Some of the tools that D&D and other RPGs provide are some structure. Structure and rules makes it
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I mean, D&D in it's original incarnation was literally and explicitly 'murder hobos on a Natural Born Killers murder-and-theft rampage through dungeons' by design.
I still remember when the AD&D 1e 'Oriental Adventures' hardback introduced the concept of 'Non Weapon Proficiencies,' i.e. the first time that your character could have non-combat skills within the framework of the rules.
what a load of crap.. (Score:2)
Hasbor/WotC don't like paying people ... (Score:2)
...They are trying to avoid paying anyone anything so they can keep all the money ... ...they had to back down from stealing art from the community (using the new OGL) ... so this is their next tactic