Apex Legends
Reappearance
The use of AI art across various media continues to accelerate, and has now made its way into two controversial topics including Wizards of the Coast’s Magic: The Gathering and Respawn’s Apex Legends.
Both have been accused of using AI art, or at least “human touch” AI art in various promotions. Perhaps the biggest issue is what’s happening with Wizards of the Coast, where after being accused of using AI art in a promotional piece, they doubled down, telling players they were “confused” that it was different from Magic card art, and that it was created by humans, not AI. .
this is not true. Hundreds of people pointed out inconsistencies with the artwork that had clear signs of AI appearing, leaving some options on the table that WotC was either not telling the truth about the art, or the artist wasn’t told who the artist was. they the truth. Or, there’s a third option that combines AI art with human touches that they’re trying to pass off as technical, which might be more likely.
Not right
Wotk
This quickly accelerated, as popular artist Dave Rapoza announced that he would no longer work with Wizards of the Coast due to the situation, amplified not only by doubling down, but because Wizards had just issued a strong anti-AI statement. Saying that they will refrain from using AI tools to create final magic projects. The “ultimate” magic projects.
Fans believe there are at least two more images from this specific promotional campaign using AI art, and what maybe What happens here is that a basic image is created using AI, and then the human artist passes it over and touches it. But they can’t fix everything, so many brands of AI art slip through the cracks. But for a game that prides itself on beautiful, memorable card art, this is a particularly obvious problem, as you can see by Rapoza immediately withdrawing. They did not publish any additions to their last statement on January 4.
The other controversy with Apex Legends seems more obvious, but fans are not happy about it though. There, fans have also spotted trademarks of AI art in the game’s promotion, but what appears to have happened this time is that the original animation was run through some sort of AI filter, resulting in it being designed with the AI elements lying around left to be spotted. .
Both situations may share a similar disconnect, where perhaps the marketing arm of these companies is making these AI-based changes while the actual art and animation departments have nothing to do with it. But with no apologies so far, it’s not clear how interested companies are in responding.
We’re seeing a huge rise in the use of AI art across multiple industries like this, and I’m sure the idea here is that if it’s possible to create an image, that’s at least “good enough”, and the problems that have been pointed out are zooming in Specific details that 98% of people won’t notice, and they don’t care about the few people they offend if they save the artists time and money.
But… artists make original art for card games and video games, and if you’re losing someone like Dave Rapoza over a one-off ad, that’s not a business you want to be in. We’ll see if these companies have any further response, or if WotC specifically reconsiders its proud declaration that this wasn’t AI art, when that’s clearly the case.
Follow me On Twitter, Threads, Youtube, And Instagram.
Pick up my science fiction novels Hero Killer series And Earth trilogy.