Tabletop publisher Chaosium has come out against AI art. The studio behind Pendragon, 7th Sea, and Call of Cthulhu is no stranger to associating with rising trends in tech circles. Last year, they were about to invest in NFTs but thankfully backpedaled after learning just how much of a scam it was. As for why they are saying no, it comes down to several legitimate concerns both ethical and legal.
Chaosium's stance on AI art
Chaosium's official stance on AI art came from a news report from Dicebreaker. In the report, Chaosium updated their art contract templates and policies to include a rule that AI art cannot be used to create material in their upcoming releases. To cite the policy itself, all artwork submitted to the publisher must be "the product of a human artist who can vouch that they created the piece, and it does not unlicensed derivative use of someone else’s work."
This change in policy gets to the heart of the studio's refusal to use AI art. As the name implies, an AI art program takes a random prompt from the user, looks for images online, then takes various elements from those images to create the desired result. Those sources can include work from other artists without their knowledge or consent. Because of this, the technology is highly contentious for a number of reasons. First, it can affect the livelihood of artists. Why pay an artist for a commission when you can just get a program to do it faster? It can also lead to legal issues regarding copyright. If an artist's work is used by an AI program for a derivative work and it isn't contested, it can lead to problems down the line. Not to mention there's the legal minefield of using AI art in commercial products due to various copyright laws.
It is because of these issues that Chaosium refuses to use AI art. They want to let their players and game masters be confident that all artwork found in their products is made by humans.
