Wizards of the Coast has confirmed that "some AI components" were used in recent marketing artwork and that it will be rethinking how it works with vendors for its promotional creative efforts.
It’s a horseshit statement, they’re still passive-aggressively deflecting blame (emphasis mine):
As you, our diligent community pointed out, it looks like some AI components that are now popping up in industry standard tools like Photoshop crept into our marketing creative, even if a human did the work to create the overall image.
While the art came from a vendor, it’s on us to make sure that we are living up to our promise to support the amazing human ingenuity that makes Magic great.
It makes perfect sense, really. This sort of thing happens due to diffusion of responsibility in large enterprises.
The person making assurances to the public (“We don’t use AI art”) does not have control over whether those assurances are actually true. They themselves only have received assurances from someone else. They’re passing a message along, and repeating it. Only when the public is skeptical does anyone within the organization actually go back and check carefully whether those assurances are really true.
What probably happened: Wizards contracted it out to a vendor who probably agreed not to use “AI art” in a boilerplate contract. That vendor hired a freelancer, and handed them the assignment. The freelancer used Photoshop inpainting features. The vendor returned the work to Wizards, who used it directly, trusting that the contract had been correctly fulfilled.
“Company policy is to not use AI art and the contractors that we hire sign a contract that stipulates so. We would like to thank our community for pointing out the AI art provided by a contractor and that went undetected by us. The situation will be handled and we will make sure to improve our internal procedures to prevent a situation like this from happening again.”
It’s a horseshit statement, they’re still passive-aggressively deflecting blame (emphasis mine):
It makes perfect sense, really. This sort of thing happens due to diffusion of responsibility in large enterprises.
The person making assurances to the public (“We don’t use AI art”) does not have control over whether those assurances are actually true. They themselves only have received assurances from someone else. They’re passing a message along, and repeating it. Only when the public is skeptical does anyone within the organization actually go back and check carefully whether those assurances are really true.
What probably happened: Wizards contracted it out to a vendor who probably agreed not to use “AI art” in a boilerplate contract. That vendor hired a freelancer, and handed them the assignment. The freelancer used Photoshop inpainting features. The vendor returned the work to Wizards, who used it directly, trusting that the contract had been correctly fulfilled.
The comms person didn’t do their job properly.
“Company policy is to not use AI art and the contractors that we hire sign a contract that stipulates so. We would like to thank our community for pointing out the AI art provided by a contractor and that went undetected by us. The situation will be handled and we will make sure to improve our internal procedures to prevent a situation like this from happening again.”
They aren’t concerned about the artists, they’re concerned because AI work isn’t copyrightable.