Dungeons & Dragons creator says he won't publicly address all AI allegations to protect artists' privacy

Over the past two years, Wizards of the Coast has faced an increasing number of allegations that AI tools (large language models, generative tools like Midjourney, etc.) were used to create official artwork and marketing materials for both Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering. Today, the publisher published an FAQ that attempts to explain its logic and process, but it leaves many questions unanswered.

The support webpage (which will be reviewed periodically in the future) states that Wizards has “made mistakes while also seeing artists and their work misidentified as problematic in a variety of ways,” referencing clear, actionable instances where generative AI art slipped through its detection tools, while also referencing instances where public fervor to uncover bad actors has led to false positives.

Speaking of the company's detection tools, one of the biggest mysteries has been the methods Wizards uses to track down offensive artwork. The FAQ states that the company relies on both public and private reports to identify where they should apply scrutiny, again running through their standard protocol and speaking to the artist in question. What does that standard protocol look like from the inside? Well…

“We regularly evaluate the resources we could use to help us detect generative AI. It’s important for us to continue to have a ‘human in the loop’ anyway, especially since these tools are fairly new,” the FAQ reads.

That’s Wizards’ summary response, along with the claim that artists receive property-exclusive manuals outlining artist responsibility regarding generative AI tools. This lack of procedure will likely frustrate players who would rather see offending illustrators ridiculed in public than lose their contract to create for D&D and MTG. That’s another point where fans and the company have starkly different opinions.

Wizards is very clear that, whenever possible, it would prefer to handle the matter internally to protect the privacy of the individual in question. If they do need to make a public statement, that document will likely be “clear and concise and hopefully avoid further uproar on the issue, both for the artist in question and for us.” That’s not to say they won’t be closing the door on the work permanently, but it is to say that the public is not entitled to a business decision disguised as a public trial. Wizards does not want any of its artists to be subject to harassment.

People are likely to disagree with parts of this stance, as seemingly every publicly available company and product is rushing to incorporate AI technology, whether it’s Adobe’s editing software suite, Twitter’s predictably bug-ridden Grok chatbot, or Wizards’ own corporate owner, Hasbro. Even Kickstarter has held off on its adoption of AI in the hopes that it will become a memory hole, while more board game publishers are rushing to renounce its use in their games. If a company doesn’t clearly denounce AI in its product, many will assume it’s happening on the sly. The result is a tense, and sometimes dangerous, environment of mistrust and assumption.

“Humans are fallible, whether it’s a conglomeration of humans (like a company) or a single human (like an artist),” the FAQ states. “We want our community to know that we’re working to make sure they can see us deliberating on how best to fulfill that commitment, even if we all occasionally stumble along the way.”