The Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game franchise says it won’t allow artists to use artificial intelligence technology to draw its cast of sorcerers, druids and other characters and scenery.
In particular, only human- created content is currently eligible for copyright protection.
About a decade ago, there was a case over who owned the copyright of a bunch of selfies taken by macaques with a camera left lying out by a wildlife photographer. The US Copyright Office ultimately decided the images were public domain since they weren’t created by a human.
Because of that, AI art isn’t eligible for copyright protections.
If you make a picture book using stable diffusion and chatgpt, the only thing you can protect is the layout you did by hand of the public domain text and images on the page. Someone could sell a competing derivative work with their own original layout.
This is particularly due to an artist using AI art for a source book they’re publishing.
That’s a problem for them because only human- created work is eligible for copyright protection; both animal-created art and AI art is inherently public domain. They want to control the IP in the source books, so they think it’s a problem if people can legally just copy the images out of them.
Could someone explain to me why AI art for DnD is such a bad thing? Doesn’t AI make it so much easier for DMs to provide visuals for their campaigns?
The article is about an artist hired by Wizards using AI for paid work. AI work currently sits in a weord space with respect to copyright.
Wizards of the coast really like copyright and getting to enforce it.
In particular, only human- created content is currently eligible for copyright protection.
About a decade ago, there was a case over who owned the copyright of a bunch of selfies taken by macaques with a camera left lying out by a wildlife photographer. The US Copyright Office ultimately decided the images were public domain since they weren’t created by a human.
Because of that, AI art isn’t eligible for copyright protections.
If you make a picture book using stable diffusion and chatgpt, the only thing you can protect is the layout you did by hand of the public domain text and images on the page. Someone could sell a competing derivative work with their own original layout.
Homebrew? Yes!
Asking for payments? Fuck off
For home games it’s great! When an artist who’s being paid to draw original art uses it? Theft.
This is particularly due to an artist using AI art for a source book they’re publishing.
That’s a problem for them because only human- created work is eligible for copyright protection; both animal-created art and AI art is inherently public domain. They want to control the IP in the source books, so they think it’s a problem if people can legally just copy the images out of them.