D&D 5E Glory of the Giants' AI-Enhanced Art

The latest D&D sourcebook, Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants, comes out in a couple of weeks. However, those who pre-ordered it on D&D Beyond already have access, and many are speculating on the presence of possible AI art in the book.

One of the artists credited is Ilya Shkipin, who does traditional, digital, and AI art. In an interview with AI Art Weekly in December 2022, Shkipin talked at length about their AI art, including the workflow involved.

On Twitter, Shkipin talked more [edit--the tweet has since been deleted but the content is below] about the AI process used in Bigby, indicating that AI was used to enhance some of the art, showing an example of the work.

There is recent controversy on whether these illustrations I made were ai generated. AI was used in the process to generate certain details or polish and editing. To shine some light on the process I'm attaching earlier versions of the illustrations before ai had been applied to enhance details. As you can see a lot of painted elements were enhanced with ai rather than generated from ground up.

-Ilya Shkipin​

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Discussions online look at more of the art in the book, speculating on the amount of AI involvement. There doesn't appear to be any evidence that any of the art is fully AI-generated.

AI art is controversial, with many TTRPG companies publicly stating that they will not use it. DriveThruRPG has recently added new policies regarding transparency around AI-generated content and a ban on 'standalone' AI art products, and Kickstarter has added similar transparency requirements, especially regarding disclosure of the data which is used to train the AI. Many artists have taken a strong stance against AI art, indicating that their art is being 'scraped' in order to produce the content.

UPDATE- Christian Hoffer reached out to WotC and received a response:

Have a statement from Wizards over the AI enhanced artwork in Glory of the Giants. To summarize, they were unaware of the use of AI until the story broke and the artwork was turned in over a year ago. They are updating their Artist guidelines in response to this.

Wizards makes things by humans for humans and that will be reflected in Artist Guidelines moving forward.

-Christian Hoffer​

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The artist, Ilya Shkipin, has removed the initial tweet where the AI process is discussed, and has posted the following:

Deleted previous post as the future of today illustrations is being discussed.

Illustrations are going to be reworked.

-Ilya Shkipin​

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[Demetrios1453]

The artist explicitly talks about doing AI on their Twitter profile. If the art director didn't catch it, that's a major screw-up. And if they let it pass, knowing it was probably going to happen, that's also an issue worth being aware of. If they told the artist not to use AI and didn't check, that's also an issue.

This is something that can and should have been caught.

If they didn't catch it, it's a minor screw-up, at most. How can you 100% tell if something is an AI touch-up or an eccentric artistic choice by the artist without being told so? Yeah, certain things can look like AI art, but certain things that look like AI art are just humans using a similar look.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If they didn't catch it, it's a minor screw-up, at most. How can you 100% tell if something is an AI touch-up or an eccentric artistic choice by the artist without being told so? Yeah, certain things can look like AI art, but certain things that look like AI art are just humans using a similar look.

If the person you're hiring puts the fact that they're all-in on AI on their social media profiles, that merits keeping a closer eye on things.

 

[Reynard]

As much as people want to frame the debate as Artists vs Tech Bros, the fact is that AI is a tool and a lot of artists will want to use the tool to do new and interesting things-- like artists have done since the first time someone chewed up some ochre and blew it across their hand on a cave wall.

The issue of how AI is trained is very real and making sure that happens in a fair and just manner is super important. But the cohort trying to paint artists who incorporate AI in their process as bad or lazy or immoral are just wrong.

 

[Demetrios1453]

If the person you're hiring puts the fact that they're all-in on AI on their social media profiles, that merits keeping a closer eye on things.

As @Parmandur said, was that on their profile then, when the art was first commissioned (or even when it was accepted)?

 

[bedir than]

If the person you're hiring puts the fact that they're all-in on AI on their social media profiles, that merits keeping a closer eye on things.

Additionally to wondering if it was on their profile a year+ ago, why would the AD at the time of submission think "In six months there will be a huge public outcry against generative AI and this thing that isn't generative AI is going to get us labelled as using generative AI even though we didn't"?

 

[ad_hoc]

It sounds okay to use AI to finish up an image just like Photoshop but then we get something like this.

It looks fine from a distance but then take a closer look at the details on the weapon. One part looks like a skull but then close up is just a blob.

The blade is unnerving.

 

[Morrus]

As @Parmandur said, was that on their profile then, when the art was first commissioned (or even when it was accepted)?

As recently as April this year, it did not mention AI.

Ilya (@i_shkipin) | Twitter

The latest Tweets from Ilya (@i_shkipin). Deconstruction of the flesh. Co-founder of @MonarxNFT . Don't miss drops join discord https://t.co/qB2cqTkEDy

web.archive.org

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Additionally to wondering if it was on their profile a year+ ago, why would the AD at the time of submission think "In six months there will be a huge public outcry against generative AI and this thing that isn't generative AI is going to get us labelled as using generative AI even though we didn't"?

Wasn't that the exact period in which WotC was trying to tell everyone that AI wasn't going to be running VTT games?

 

[bedir than]

Wasn't that the exact period in which WotC was trying to tell everyone that AI wasn't going to be running VTT games?

One year ago they received the art. Six months later the public outcry about generative AI (which this artist didn't use) started.
The art director neither operates a time machine nor are they an oracle

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

One year ago they received the art. Six months later the public outcry about generative AI (which this artist didn't use) started.
The art director neither operates a time machine nor are they an oracle

An email going out saying "hey, our position about AI at WotC is still being decided, but we'd like you to keep us in the loop if you're using it in any work you're doing under contract with us" isn't a big lift or a weird thing to expect a manager to send out any time in the past six months.

If I were a senior manager at WotC, I would have expected -- even instructed -- all my managers to gather that info after the last AI kerfuffle.