AI Art in Bigby's Glory of the Giants?!? | Nerd Immersion

We learned officially that WotC has AI generated art in their latest Bigby's Glory of the Giants book. It does seem that they were unaware AI art was being used and they are taking efforts to fix it, however it is not the kind of PR WotC needs right now.

Thanks for watching!
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
📬 Shipping: P.O. Box 416 Salisbury Mills, NY 12577
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
🔥 Support 🔥
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
🎤 Social Media 🎤
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

Nerd Immersion is an entertainment network focused on Dungeons & Dragons. Our YouTube Channel currently has over 1000 D&D videos covering everything from D&D advice, D&D product reviews/unboxings, Top 10 videos, DM's Guild Module reviews, and play throughs of over 13 different D&D campaigns, and more.

Any links to products or services may be affiliate links that give me a small kickback at no cost to you, with no influence on the content. #dnd #dnd5e #nerdimmersion

[fernandobueno]

there´s no way an art director would miss this, this is called "testing the waters"

[LJLvids]

It's like whenever WoTC is given an option, they have a internal discussion about whatever the exact worst choic is in that situation and then pick that option.

[zhornlegacy]

So what's the likelihood that their announcement on banning AI art isn't a matter of never wanting it to be used, but just backtracking on having been caught?

[treebeetle]

I would be pissed if I paid 60 bucks and saw gross AI fingers in the art.

[echedp]

I think this is yet another example of Wizards not hiring anyone to proof and look over these books before letting them out. Anyone that actually checks the book can see that is off, which means nobody looks over this stuff in any way. This is just like how Spelljammer had to be reworked a week after it came out because nobody bothered to look over that. This is such a lazy company that does not seem to care for a moment about its over priced products.

[AAron-grjk]

If this was submitted 2 years ago.... there's a whole train of books that will have ai art in it

[TonyFlowNMMM]

Ai “enhancement” would not cause these types of problems in the art. These things with the hands and feet and clipping come SOLELY from fully generated ai images. Maybe the artist touched it up after it was generated but there’s no way this was caused by enhancements. They are totally different things

[bryansyme]

As a freelance illustrator who has done work for numerous RPGs I find it very unlikely that an art director would not notice that these pieces were AI enhanced. Either they were testing the waters or whoever was the ad on the project needs to be seriously reprimanded and perhaps fired.

[CitanulsPumpkin]

It's almost unforgivable for WotC to release bad art for D&D books. There's no reason for them to not use samples of the best art from Magic the Gathering in almost every book. Especially now that every cardset is trying to bleed MtG players dry by filling collector's packs with alt art versions of every card.

[AwesomeWookiee]

I actually don't think that Wizards are lying about this. They've worked with Ilya since 2014 and I figure they said "hey, why check this. We trust this artist".

It's the Hadozee all over again. Don't blame malice what can be attributed to incompetence.

[kindalas]

I think that if the art was submitted 18 months ago that people just weren't aware of the signs of AI art and that the images were approved back then and then never reviewed.

[Hey-Its-Dingo]

The artists whose art was altered have been sharing all of their actual art pieces on Twitter (I refuse to call it X), and they ALL look infinitely better than the shitty AI that the guy fucked up.

[partyinthecloudkingdom]

yeah, there's absolutely no way an art director for something as big as wotc would have dropped the ball on this. either their art director/qaqc team is overworked to the point of somehow missing that a giant has no foot and his wolf has human feet, or wizards was testing the waters and got it thrown back in their face

[jamesaolsen]

Thanks for covering this. Glad Wizards is clarifying. Re: the stone giant example, the pinky is not really out of place- that's more of a classicall sculputal approach, and appears in art throughout the ages here and there. Also the six toes I think is a quiet nod to the Nephilim and Goliath from the Bible.

[missmyk]

What's really reprehensible is that one of the concept artists, April Prime, had her artwork scraped into an "AI" abomination that didn't look anywhere as good as her original art WITHOUT HER PERMISSION.

[Birdman_LIVE]

Thanks for jumping on this Ted. I’m sure you’re exhausted from the con. Appreciate the effort.

[Artemisthemp]

So they admit to not check their stuff, which can explain stuff like the day 0 Erata for Dragonlance.

They better have check Planescape to ensure stuff isn't excluded else they WotC may never recover.

[dontgivetwothwips]

An artist with standards and pride in their work wouldn’t submit obviously flawed work like this. I’m sure they wanted their full pay despite using crap short cuts.

I sell original artwork made with physical medium on canvas. I’m not worried about AI cutting into my field but digital artist absolutely should be because the tech will improve and be indistinguishable from true digital art.

I was making digital art when it was still new and controversial. It has rightly earned its place as a respectable form of creation that takes just as much skill and innovation as physical mediums. Digital art and AI created art are not analogous.

[ChaosReacon]

At this point, it's very unfortunate that the art director didn't catch onto those mistakes/issues. And greatly more unfortunate is that it only takes a few people to give a bad impression of the whole, and many people will blame the whole as if they were all behind it. I'm guessing at this point either the art director got let go or had a very stern talking to over this.

But now it also makes me disappointed by those gravely outraged by this, saying the artist that had worked with WotC for close to a decade needs to be fired and no longer work with them or an issue that has cropped up in the last few years. I'm personally disappointed that the artist decided to treat their work in such a way, but in the same vein, would these same people do the same to a close friend or a colleague that they worked with for several years? I would guess many of these same people wouldn't just cut these people outright.

And seeing that this issue caused some rightful backlash, hopefully WotC is going to be asking for the process that their artists do for them (though would be nice if some of these companies helped each other to create a good guideline for similar issues (Paradox Inc. with one of their freelance artists that worked on Werewolf: The Apocalypse 5th Edition and Bungie as a vender used Fan Art that they thought was Bungie's official art for an in-game cinematic)) as many times the process for review doesn't get updated until an issue happens to them.

As for me being worried for the near future products, there's still a few months left for the official launch and usually they do test prints first, so fingers crossed they aren't too far ahead into the printing process. So there still is some worry, unless they make an announcement to delay, chances are that they're in the early stages of printing and hopefully what was shown were just the test prints if there were AI art in these books (though less likely if this was the first instance that this was an issue as most artists are usually heavily against using AI in their work, unless this artist was also apart of those projects). But only time will tell and a difficult decision (well, mostly costly) for WotC if they wish to keep their current release schedule and AI was used in the upcoming books.

[christophervanhindenburg]

I have a feeling the new Phandelver and Planescape will also be affected. They have probably already been printed and are sorting out logistics. Something to look out for.