Curious as to what your objection to the D&D stuff is. I'll tell you why I don't care: for me, "art" has always been about creative individuals using tools to manifest their ideas for the consumption of others and I find that in general, those who consume only have a rudimentary understanding of the process by which their art is made. This makes art extremely sensitive to vagaries of public opinion; two hundred years later, you will still find plenty of people arguing that photography isn't art. Every artistic movement suffered the same; realism wasn't romanticism, expressionism wasn't realism, etc. Fundamentally, if you make art a different way you have to suffer a generation's worth of poseurs insisting that if it isn't exactly what came before it's doggerel. I think people who get bent over AI don't realize how much "AI" has been used in art and photography already. Content-aware fill has been in photoshop for something like fifteen years now, and in the rest of the creative suite for five or so years. Luminar will nature-fake just about anything you want without you having much of a clue how to do it and Google is busily selling Pixels that are busily upsetting columnists everywhere with their ability to comp pretty much anything in-phone. My personal fave: the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra which can recognize the moon and put a sticker wherever it detects it. I also happen to know the utter sweatshop content like Dungeons & Dragons manuals are produced under. See, three of my friends used to draw comics and now draw big hollywood movies. And I spent a couple years trying to turn a script into a graphic novel. And fundamentally, pretty much any art you see at that level is run through off-shore sweatshops that pay pennies on the dollar what Americans cost; considering how little scrutiny most of the pictures in books like that get, it's not like the AI is putting anyone out of business. The one on the left has been zhuzh'd by an AI, the one on the right hasn't. Okay, the hands are marginally better, which is saying something for AI. The feet are marginally worse. You could argue that both are styles. You could also argue that both are the same. You could also argue that there is no AI necessary for comic art to be controversial. Finally, there simply isn't a market for quality art at this level. Those who make it anyway suffer. As far as I'm concerned, if a talented artist can make things 50% better with AI, we should buy him two AIs. Whenever the stuff isn't steered by humans it's ghastly and when it is, it can be pretty cool.
My problem with the D&D stuff is that , good art is the point to buying one of the sourcebooks. And the AI versions are plainly, not as good. This is taking something that was lovingly made, and at the top of it's field and being replaced with something worse and cheaper. Here's what they replaced it with which imo. is just clearly better. This stuff prints money. If they're not even willing to pay artists the insulting amount they currently do, how will commercial art ever get made? This isn't a hacky product review, its a main course offering by the biggest name in fantasy illustration. This would be like the New York Times Kissinger obit. being ChatGPT filling in notes. Re: Content-aware fill , etc. this feels different to me. That's automating what is a complicated but relatively mechanical process where the goal is to look as unassuming as possible. AI is very good at giving coherent and unassuming. I love what AI is doing for photogrammetry, & i like the Pixel camera stuff. When indie people use it to make their low budget work look nicer thats cool, though its often looks distracting and out of place. But the AI being used here is making the world cheaper and blander
I appreciate the nuance. I haven't had anything to do with RPGs since, uhm, about '89 and frankly, either of those pictures up top kick the ever-loving shit out of anything Palladium or FASA had back then. I will also admit that in the image linked above, I really don't see much difference. With the images you linked, there's only one comparison and yeah, the hand-drawn tail is clearly better. Here's my argument, though - bad tail and all, it's still clearly orders of magnitude beyond what I grew up with. And at $9.99 in 1977, it would be $52 converted to 2023 figures - more than half again what WoTC is asking for Glory of Giants. My buddy Richard left New York for Hollywood in 1996 because he was getting $800 a page to draw Daredevil for DC. That, he told me, was the most he ever got in the comic world - full pages paid less than covers. When I was looking at getting my book done by Archaia I was told to budget about $125 for every B&W page and about $250 for every color one. The one number in your link is $125 - if you got $125 for a single magic card in 2015, that tells me that game rates are still substantially better than comics. And yeah - it should be more. But then someone has to pay that. Michael Whelan sells his originals for about a factor of ten more than WoTC pays for a Magic card. DC, if I'm adjusting for the times, probably pays about a factor of ten for a multi-panel page. So set aside the argument that "there should be more money." Granted. Conceded. IF there is no more money, where does the line for AI involvement reside? You're cool with content-aware fill and not cool with AI warming over a monster's hands - presuming there's no more money to be had, at what point is it cool for the artist to hit the magic tweakbox?
I think it's cool to use the tweakbox when it raises the standard, when it's being used to replace drudgery, or when it's for something unimportant. This is the fun and creative part though, none of the artists I know like the process of drawing a quick sketch and then having control taken away at the end. And "presuming there's no money" doesn't apply here since Wizards of the Coast is by far Hasbro's most profitable division. (1 bil revenue, 500 mill profits in 2021) They have the money. It's not that the AI assisted art is awful, it's that (in this case at least) it's worse for the artists and worse for the consumers, and there's no reason for it besides greed.
Our web designer is also Paizo's web designer so I've had some... nuanced discussions around WotC and budgets, shall we say. I'm not going to say "they don't have the money;" I am going to say "they're not very good with money." I agree wholeheartedly that the investment in a monster manual or whatever should definitely lean heavily into the art. I'll go one further: a "deluxe edition" at twice the price with double the illustrations would probably sell very well. My broader point is "they should suck less" sidesteps the issue. We can both agree on it. However, if they're incapable of sucking less the problem doesn't go away. I think my broader point is "when it's for something unimportant" is a moving target. For example, if you kick ass at hands, having the AI do your hands is definitely NOT "something unimportant." However if you kick ass at faces and suck at hands, AI hands could be defended as "something unimportant." I don't have an answer here. I've just found that debates around artistry in the comics/gaming world tend to be a lot more knee-jerk than informed, and I think it's generally detrimental to the fandom.
When I wrote "something unimportant," I meant it from the fan's perspective - some marketing copy somewhere on a website isn't going to bother a lot of people but the art in a book that is bought essentially just for the art is something important. For more or less important parts of an image, for artist that likes drawing hands vs faces etc., I would not be offended if they Chose to use AI because they liked the workflow, it made results that they are happy with and represent their vision, and improved their art. I am offended when AI is used to reduce the artist from drawing a full work to drawing a prompt. For years, if you wanted art to be cheap and good you could squeeze artists, outsource it to other countries, and other dirty tricks but at the end of the day, an artist somewhere gets paid and thanklessly puts their own love and care and ideas into the work where they can. I don't think that the world would be better if all these artists went from making basically no money to none, and if commercial art was entirely soulless instead of mostly soulless. Even if miraculously the money they saved went into making the product cheaper and better for me instead of lining investor's pockets. I think that being Very Upset at WotC using AI is pushing back at what seems like an inevitable trend by capitalists to make the world worse. I have a friend who makes marketing videos. Recently, he has been told to make them twice as quickly, essentially forcing the backgrounds to be made with AI (and ending up fine but worse that it would have been otherwise). Before AI that wouldn't have been possible, if you hire someone skilled you get good work or nothing. I don't know exactly where the line should be drawn. If you're indie (as in, actually independent) and choose to use AI, then cool for you. But any use of AI from a company, especially a big publicly traded one, reeks of it being used against the artists will. Unlike the Thundercats reboot, a lot of the outrage against Stable Diffusion etc. is coming from artists.
I think this is insightful, and I think the important aspect is agency. Did you use AI because it made things better? Fine. Did you use AI because it only made things cheaper? Well the end effect is your product is cheaper. I also think too many people get wrapped around the wheel over the tools, rather than the intent, and the more fundamentally evil you are, the quicker people will use any excuse to call you out.I think that being Very Upset at WotC using AI is pushing back at what seems like an inevitable trend by capitalists to make the world worse.