A Poll On The Use Of AI Art In TAS Products

[Endie]

Except in the AI example, gen AI was trained using stolen works, so you cannot use the defense that you didn't know. It is common knowledge and has been proven. If Gen AI can prove it was not made with stolen works, in my mind anyhow, that would be a different thing entirely.

Every artist was trained on all that went before. If you can provide an example of a great artist whose works were wholly de novo then I shall yield the floor. But I suspect you’ll be reduced to “that monkey they gave a paintbrush to for the BBC article”.

You made the assertion that Berg ripped off Bach. Without researching to refute your assertion, I stated that it may be shady, but is legal. That is not a rip on Berg, that is a response to your assertion of theft.

It is good that we can disagree on a subject without cancelling each other.

History, Sociology and Ethics are subjects I can speak with authority on. I tend to listen more to the originals than those who riffed on their themes. USB stick with all of Beethoven's and Mozart's symphonies and several other collections are on repeat when I drive. Almost everything since the late 1800's is derivative.
AI art is not good for the human experience. It is an extension of the participation trophy crowd.
Humans NEED to be challenged in order to grow..

Berg didn't "rip off" Bach: he was a stupendous artist who took inspiration (“stole” as the simplistic version would put it). Warhol wasn't "ripping off" Mr Campbell, famed soup manufacturer. Picasso and Braque were never "ripping off" those whose works they incorporated in their collage pieces. Damien Hirst isn't "ripping off" Koons or Bacon or Duchamp. Come to that, Duchamp wasn't "ripping off" the J.L. Mott Ironworks Company. If you think otherwise then you're certainly entitled to your opinions but I am very keen to see your specification justification in each case.

If you don't think otherwise then nice! I'm glad we agree!

 

[Arkathan]

Edit: example: "To the Memory of an Angel" by Alban Berg, which is a direct lift from the Bach...

Given the context of the conversation, it is hard to interpret this phrase differently.
So if you didn't mean stolen, fine. I was reacting to YOUR post, assuming that your statement was accurate. I was not accusing Berg of anything.

 

[Endie]

Given the context of the conversation, it is hard to interpret this phrase differently.
So if you didn't mean stolen, fine. I was reacting to YOUR post, assuming that your statement was accurate. I was not accusing Berg of anything.

Please address the specific examples I gave and explain why Picasso, Berg, Duchamp and Hirst were “ripping off” in each case.

Edit: I just re-read your post where you said that everything after the 1800s was derivative but claimed authority because you listen to Beethoven symphonies. Apparently unaware of the immense debt owed to Bach, again, by Beethoven who (to borrow your term) “ripped off” Bach (go beyond the symphonies and listen to the Grosse Fuge, which small-minded traditionalists of the time hated, but which was recognised by the 20th century composers you so disdain as a masterpiece).

The ninth symphony - whose final movement is much loved even by those who don’t know Stockhausen or Schoenberg - contains a double fugue in the final movement, testimony to how Beethoven was “trained” on the works of Bach.

Come to that, your other source (Mozart) also drew upon those who went before in exactly the same way you despise. “Bach is the Father, we are the Children!" were his words (about JS Bach’s son!)

 

[Arkathan]

Again, I interpretted YOUR comment as accusing Berg. I gave the benefit of doubt that YOUR apparent accusation was based on SOMETHING.
With that in mind, public domain material is no longer protected, although taking without accreditation is shady.
Take from that what you will.

My beef is computers taking JOY from people for the sake of convenience and leaving them only the menial tasks to look forward to.
It is bad enough that governments want to make drones of people, locking them up for daring to disagree with the State position. Then we have to put up with the AI crowd telling us that we have to take the jobs that Computers do not want to do, instead of the other way around.

 

[Endie]

Again, I interpretted YOUR comment as accusing Berg. I gave the benefit of doubt that YOUR apparent accusation was based on SOMETHING.
With that in mind, public domain material is no longer protected, although taking without accreditation is shady.
Take from that what you will.

My beef is computers taking JOY from people for the sake of convenience and leaving them only the menial tasks to look forward to.
It is bad enough that governments want to make drones of people, locking them up for daring to disagree with the State position. Then we have to put up with the AI crowd telling us that we have to take the jobs that Computers do not want to do, instead of the other way around.

My apologies: when you mentioned that you were an authority on these matters I assumed that it was safe to discuss Berg, Duchamp, the influence of Bach on the artists you mentioned, etc. To be clear: Berg only “ripped off” Bach to the same extent as Beethoven (or statistical models come to that): each were trained upon it. And no, I am not claiming that statistical models have reached old Ludwig’s level, before anyone jumps in with that bad faith argument.

Similarly, any artist who is original and creative has nothing to fear: their life will be no harder than it already is, with a conservative mass audience that believes great art ended in the 1800s unchanged in their opinion.

But, luckily, those of us with no great artistic talent now have a way to express ourselves, with a new tool that requires a new talent (prompt engineering). It is easier than learning to paint, certainly, but it democratises creativity and makes it available to all. Which must be as terrifying to the mediocre artist as Claude is to the mediocre programmer. But neither is going away.

 

[Vormaerin]

I just want anything made by an "AI" image generator to be labeled as such so I can choose not to spend money on it.

 

[Endie]

I just want anything made by an "AI" image generator to be labeled as such so I can choose not to spend money on it.

I absolutely agree that authorship should be attributed. Including the initial, inspirational sketches, of course, which as Matthew explained regarding Mongoose art, are often AI creations.

 

[MasterGwydion]

I figure that if I am writing stuff, that it won't have art because I can't do art. I can do drafting, but I almost never actually do that for things that I have designed. If need be, I can describe it using words that I can write myself and leave the envisioning of it to the reader. It is the way novels have been doing it for centuries and is the way novels are read in the modern day as well.

I have nothing against using art in things that I write, but if I include art, I would want to pay an artist. I appreciate skills that others have that I do not. I want to reward that difference, not eliminate it by having a "non-sophont" doing the work that I cannot do..

 

[Vormaerin]

I don't particularly consider that a "gotcha". If someone uses an AI prompt to get some ideas and then produces their own art based on that, that's okay. On the other hand, if someone is just photoshopping an AI image, that's probably not something I'm interested in. I'm willing to pay for someone's skill in a craft, whether that is writing or drawing. I have no interest in someone's ability to push a button and get something a machine with no intention spits out. I have access to those tools myself if I wanted that.

I've bought plenty of RPG products with no art or with just sketches or whatever. I'm not interested in wasting my money of image generator results nor am I inclined to trust that a person using image generation didn't also use a chatbot to "write" the text.

I pay for RPG things because I am interested in supporting the creativity and effort of people in a hobby I enjoy. I've been in this hobby since 1979. I don't "need" more RPG books. So, again, I am not willingly going to waste my money on stuff spit out by a machine that doesn't actually have any intelligence or intention to it.

You can spend your money however you wish.

 

[Sageryne]

I have been the primary author or significant contributor for several RPG books published by a long standing (but small) game company (Columbia Games Inc). I have also written and released significantly more articles as fanon (fan fiction) for free, including a large number of Harn articles, Star Wars, The One Ring and Traveller. For those fanon articles, I hired artists and mappers to illustrate my written work. That was a significant expense.

Over the last year, I wrote two Traveller articles and published them through Drive Thru RPG under Mongoose's Travellers' Aid Society self-publishing umbrella. I hired artists to illustrate them, Ian Stead and Richard Luschek.

I will be frank, neither of those two TAS articles have earned me back enough to cover the art costs.

RPG publishing is for a niche market. The standards for RPG presentation have grown substantially over the last 50 years. The Little Black Books had very little art, and what there was was in black and white. Today's modern RPGs are full of colour. Audiences expect full colour illustrations and maps of a very high standard. I am one of them.

This puts publishers (big or small) in a very tough position. Art, especially high-quality, full-colour art costs money. I am good friends with the artist who illustrates all the commercial Harn art and who has done work for both my Harn (commercial and fanon) and Traveller (self-published) articles. He is very worried. He makes his living as an artist, but all around him, that work is drying up. He still earns money as an illustrator, but no one buys custom portraits or one-off paintings anymore.

AI art is CHEAP. Good quality human made art costs money.

Most game companies are small businesses with 5 - 20 employees (with a small number of exceptions) and a larger group of freelance contractors. Illustrating a game book can be a significant portion of their budget.

Cutting that big line item is tempting. That is why we are having this conversation.

To me, the whole debate comes down to this: Are customers willing to pay a significant premium to ensure the art is all human-made?

Unfortunately, what I am seeing is that there are many customers (under their own financial stress in this modern world) who... if faced with two books with identical text... one with human-art for $50 and one with AI-art for $30... would be sorely tempted to buy the $30 book.

I also understand the company's position. If they are earning the same profit on the two books and they sell more $30 AI-illustrated books, they are going to go the direction that makes them more money.

There is a bigger question than just art. Robots are getting very good, very quickly.

What happens when any type of factory can be fully automated with AI-driven robots.

- Will you pay a premium for an all-human assembled car?
- Will you pay a premium for an all-human built house?
- Will you pay a premium for an all-human prepared and served coffee?

Artists are the first on the cutting block of AI and robotics. But make no mistake, when we move from Expert Systems with limited self-learning to an Artificial Generalized Intelligence, all of us are going to be out of a job.

Paraphrasing one quote I saw, "I wanted AI to take over cleaning my house and washing my dishes so I could spend more time on my art, not have AI take over my art so that the only job left for me was cleaning the house and washing dishes."

We are at the cusp of a huge change in work in general. Before the advent of the car, carriage making, horse-raising, saddle and tack making were all big industries. Within a decade, they were gone.

 

[Nadia Grell]

Maybe close down this thread and lock it. It appears that emotions are starting to run hot about this subject.

I added my view as an artist and I do understand that not all artists can be as lucky as I am when it comes to living on my art. Most artists (especially those who paints and draws) are struggling with AI, but when it does come to this thread. I believe that it is hard to have a healthy debate about AI art in RPG books as i had hoped as it feels as if it is borderlining on personal attacks.

Have fun with this subject.
Nadia out
*Mic drop*

 

[rinku]

The other option for illustrating articles is to hit public domain. There IS a great deal of public domain SF art, mostly from the 50's or earlier. Much of it is (unsurprisingly) suitable for Traveller.

But here's some stuff from the 70's:

Space Colony Art from the 1970s

The cylinder becomes a kind of Eden regained in O’Neill’s space fantasy, an Arcadia retrofitted with solar panels and cosmic-ray shields.

publicdomainreview.org

Also, It's likely that AI image makers that are set to an art style that's more than 75 years old (at the moment before 1950) will mostly using PD resources, unless you go for something like "Disney" or "Superman". "1930's pulp" is a fairly ethics free zone.

 

[Vormaerin]

I was in gaming long before this modern obsession with full color illustrations and extreme graphic design. I enjoy good art. But I'm not buying a coffee table art book, so as far as I am concerned, if they can't afford an artist, then don't hire one. In my opinion, if someone can get an image generator to produce an image for their thing, the image isn't actually needed because image generators don't have the ability to know what is important or not important.

If you think the market prefers AI illustration to no illustration, then do that. I'm just not going to buy it. I'm not going to get mad at your for doing that, though if I buy something and then find out its AI because it wasn't identified, then I'll be pissed off.

If someone's doing a bake sale, I don't expect to see them selling factory made cookies. If I wanted those, I could just buy them.

It might well be that in a few years, there's nothing for me to buy in this hobby because it's all done by AI. So it goes. I buy things because I like supporting human creativity and buying chatbot or image generator "content" is the opposite of that.

 

[DataDwarf]

Maybe close down this thread and lock it. It appears that emotions are starting to run hot about this subject.

I added my view as an artist and I do understand that not all artists can be as lucky as I am when it comes to living on my art. Most artists (especially those who paints and draws) are struggling with AI, but when it does come to this thread. I believe that it is hard to have a healthy debate about AI art in RPG books as i had hoped as it feels as if it is borderlining on personal attacks.

Have fun with this subject.
Nadia out
*Mic drop*

Nerco a thread that hasn't had a post in 6 months and then ask to have it locked. LOL

 

[swordtart]

I was in gaming long before this modern obsession with full color illustrations and extreme graphic design. I enjoy good art. But I'm not buying a coffee table art book, so as far as I am concerned, if they can't afford an artist, then don't hire one. In my opinion, if someone can get an image generator to produce an image for their thing, the image isn't actually needed because image generators don't have the ability to know what is important or not important.

If you think the market prefers AI illustration to no illustration, then do that. I'm just not going to buy it. I'm not going to get mad at your for doing that, though if I buy something and then find out its AI because it wasn't identified, then I'll be pissed off.

If someone's doing a bake sale, I don't expect to see them selling factory made cookies. If I wanted those, I could just buy them.

It might well be that in a few years, there's nothing for me to buy in this hobby because it's all done by AI. So it goes. I buy things because I like supporting human creativity and buying chatbot or image generator "content" is the opposite of that.

Your bake sale analogy opens up an interesting new angle here.

For me it depends on what the bake sale is in aid of. If it is for charity I don't care where they sourced their cakes as long as they make a profit. Home made cakes get kudos but just donating some cakes you bought in a shop because you don't have time is still an act of generosity. Providing a picture to break up the text or showing you a thing rather than describe it in excruciating detail is an act of generosity to you by the author. Whether they commission the art, do it themselves, use clip art or rendered clip art by AI doesn't change that.

A local may stock some "brand" goods because their customers occasionally come in to buy some artisan cakes, but do their weekly shop at the super market where they always buy a particular brand of bread. If the local baker can get the revenue from that sale as well then it is a few more pence towards their business rates and may mean the difference between staying in business or going out of business. In this case of course the branded goods are clearly not made by the baker so this would be your AI produced badging. Those small publishers are also the ones that over time might support "real" artists. If they go out of business before then they will never do so.

AI art is a spectrum. If you are just typing in a prompt and taking whatever random output then you are actually being less selective than choosing some PD clip art. I doubt that this is actually what is happening so that is a bit of a straw man argument. What is most likely happening, in the majority of cases, is that a carefully worded prompt is being used and the output being selectively tuned (by a human with artistic or technical sensibilities) until they get an image that meets their requirements. The missing step to acceptability to some people is taking that output to a flesh and blood artist so they can finish it.

In order for that artist to have added any value (and to establish copyright for the work) they need to change the it in some way, but that is now a change to your vision*. I have never commissioned an artist as I know what I want and I don't know any of my friends who are artists that will do that, they always end up doing what they want to do. They may produce an image that I like and value, but never what I envisaged. If I was doing that for a creative work of my own then I have lost creative control over a key aspect. The only way I can get my own vison on the page is telling a machine without ego to do exactly what I want.

When I buy art by a human, I buy off the shelf. I just look at stuff until I find something I like. I can't tell you why I like it it is an emotional response (and as an ND I have few enough of those that I cannot afford to ignore those I do). If I want something to illustrate MY creative work, I can articulate what I want as I don't need an emotional connection to it (and I don't anticipate my reader having an emotional connection to the picture). So I think there is a difference between representational art (technical drawing for example a map or deck plan) vs. evocative art (such as a flashy cover to grab the buyers attention vs. expressive art (which is expressing the artist and making a connection through the work - and to my mind is for galleries not published works).

*If an artist produces an image to a precise brief and it meets that brief, is their work derivative or original? I doubt any artist would allow themselves to be so constrained so I suspect there is no precedent.

 

[Anstett]

*If an artist produces an image to a precise brief and it meets that brief, is their work derivative or original? I doubt any artist would allow themselves to be so constrained so I suspect there is no precedent.

The term "pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works" is used by the U.S. Copyright Office for original art like technical drawings and blueprints. If the drawing is created for a client and they own the copyright, it's considered a work made for hire.

 

[MasterGwydion]

The term "pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works" is used by the U.S. Copyright Office for original art like technical drawings and blueprints. If the drawing is created for a client and they own the copyright, it's considered a work made for hire.

I know that when I contract architects to design buildings for me, it is in the contract that all rights to the work pass to me. If it is not, then the architect can still assert their rights.

 

[rinku]

Rights also vary by juristiction. The USA is NOT the same as the UK, or EU, or Canada, or Australia. Nor will a US court precedent have much bearing on a British one. Although the international Berne Convention does add a baseline minimum copyright protection period in most countries.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Rights also vary by juristiction. The USA is NOT the same as the UK, or EU, or Canada, or Australia. Nor will a US court precedent have much bearing on a British one. Although the international Berne Convention does add a baseline minimum copyright protection period in most countries.

Are any non-US jurisdictions coming down against generative AI (art, writing, anything) in their legislation or courts?

 

[rinku]

Since the generative AI companies are mostly in the US and China, I don't think so. Ultimately it's still up to the IP owner to enforce it vs the accused thief; if the thief is DeepSeek... good luck with that. Even an end user may not be easily able to be prosecuted, depending on local law.

Australia is mostly focussing on limiting social media to age 16 or higher, and the UK may be going in the opposite direction.