WotC Used AI Art in Newest Dungeons Dragons Book

It's now confirmed that WotC did use AI art in their newest book. Professionally paid management is apparently not doing great at their job nowadays expecially considering the recent crackdown on AI generated material on the Dungeons Masters Guild and this book being MSRPed 20% more than previous books.

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[Blandco]

No further updates until new info presents itself. Personally I believe it's absolutely ridiculous that a professional art department did not see the telltale signs of AI when presented with this artwork.

[Castillo]

Just my two cents. As someone who enjoys art and spends a lot of time looking at it, I think there is AI generated art here and I think its shameful that a multi million dollar company allows this in their products. Not even GW does that lol

[BobMcDowell]

How often do we need WotC to tell us they are evil before we believe them?

[Octopugilist]

I think the genie is out of the bottle when it comes to AI generated images, and I don't think it"s going back in unfortunately.

But the idea that a company that exists entirely based on the creations of brilliant artists would accept this machine-made dreck (that doesn't survive even a seconds scrutiny) for publication is horrifying, dehumanizing and not the least bit surprising. The suits would put the sunset in a bottle if they thought people would buy it.

[modestrocker]

ai images - stop calling it art. ai cant make art

[mjphyil]

First, AI is NOT going to go away, no matter how much of an outcry is made. Second, large corporations are bureaucratic - which means that is highly likely there isn't a robust screening process for using freelance work - a book can have up to 80+ different artists contributing, there may be only one person reviewing whether or not they use AI or claim otherwise - I'm not saying this is right, it's just corporate reality at a company the size of Hasbro. Having been in the large corporate space for 25+ years I can assure you things get overlooked all the time - the volume of work a person or department usually has to do is far greater than their capacity to do effectively. In short, cry and complain all you want, it's not going to change a for profit company like Hasbro.

[BockwinkleB]

It amazes me that people still buy WOTC garbage.

[franklyanogre]

Ever since I stopped giving money to people that see me as an obstacle to their profits, I have felt so much better. I even stopped caring that 6E is going to suck.

[TheDeinonychus]

Honestly I'm not surprised. WotC is not a good company, they don't treat their employees nor their fans very well, and they have a lot of very questionable business practices.
When it comes to AI art, I personally don't have a problem with it. Especially if it's someone who's trying to start their own game and who likely won't have the capital to hire a bunch of artists to do artwork for their game. Even a professional artist who wants to use AI to create elements for their artwork, such as backgrounds or visual effects that might otherwise be too difficult for them to do by hand seems perfectly fine for me. But a massive company like WotC should know better than to try and pass off AI art as commissioned artwork in their books, especially if they are not going to pass on the cost cutting that offers to their customers and infact intend to charge even more for their books.

[raffitz]

Seems to me like they banned AI art in DMs Guild because there are plenty of freely available models with unethically sourced training, so they're covering their corporate asses.
And with this art, they specifically trained it on their own assets (I don't know the usual terms of their contracts with freelancers, so I don't know how valid that ownership is), so they feel their asses are sufficiently covered. Obviously they don't care about the work and effort of the contractors who produced the training data that they consider theirs.

[TheRunningLeopard]

Oh god, this pisses me off. I’m an artist and no lie, the little money I make from art basically solely dnd related.

[APerson-wscw]

it's not just that it's AI, even though that's incredibly immoral for the art theft part of it, but the art is also straight up terrible. It breaks lore, anatomy and has terrible rendering. I believe they didn't see it, because WotC was stupid enough to let blatant racism through.

[samankucher]

i agree the only Ai am ok with is the Ai that they made by using a database ethicaly gathered ..

to me it's clear they are hiring Ai users because it's cheep and they it's just greed .

[crankysmurf]

Apparently the artist in question has illustrated in the Monster Manual (such as the nothic and shambling mound) but seems like he recently started using AI to "enhance" his work. The art for the Bigby's book was done two years ago before the big AI bandwagon in the past year.

[RIVERSRPGChannel]

Wow
WotC is at it again.
I’m not really surprised by this though.

[addictedtominisandlovingit]

I am sure all of the elevator operators will be very displeased.

[samuelbroad]

hopefully the robots can start playing d&d and doing other hobbies as well so us humans can get back to basics and just work, work, work. Mammals shouldn't have leisure time.
But seriously like @raffitz's comment below, once an artwork is commissioned, the commissioner (WotC in this case) can do anything with it forever. So if they're using one artist to manipulate the work of another, whether AI tools or other tools, they can. Simple...and then everything has too many legs. It is the spiderverse. Most importantly it'll be interesting to see if the art directors start commissioning scenes where the PC's are in peril, squabbling over treasure and behaving disorderly, like all the editions artwork did before 5th ed. I've worked as an artist and illustrator and it's a grind, will AI as a tool help some peeps? Most probably. But after 25 years I just make and create mainly for myself and friends. Galleries, gatekeepers and clients have always been a juggle and quite a lot of stress, apart from actually generating something from a blank piece of paper: the actual work. It's interesting to follow.
My advice to anyone: make scenes with narrative: not just a single character. Hold true to your style and let it develop, it will. Your style will show through more than anything generic. Draw most days, and do other things too, the art game has a lot of moving pieces and the artist is only one small part of it.