Wizards of the Coast has confirmed that “some elements of artificial intelligence” were used in recent promotional art for the game Magic: The Gathering and that it will rethink how it works with suppliers for its creative promotional efforts.
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For those unfamiliar with the situation, Wizards of the Coast released a new marketing campaign for Magic: The Gathering and people quickly noticed that something wasn't right and that artificial intelligence appeared to have generated some or all of the material.
In a now-deleted post on X/Twitter (via PC Gamer), WotC denies that the project was created using artificial intelligence.
“We understand the confusion from fans given that the style is different from the card art, but we stand by our previous statement,” WotC wrote. “This art was created by humans, not artificial intelligence.”
Now, WotC admits that "some elements of artificial intelligence" made their way into the images.
“We made a mistake earlier when we said that a promotional image we posted was not created using artificial intelligence,” Wizards of the Coast wrote on X/Twitter. “As you, our attentive community, have pointed out, it appears that some elements of artificial intelligence now appearing in industry-standard tools like Photoshop have infiltrated our creative promotion, even though a human did the work to create the overall image.
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“While the art came from a vendor, it’s our responsibility to ensure we keep our promise to support the amazing human inventive spirit that makes Magic great. We’ve already established that we require artists, writers, and creators who contribute to the Magic TCG to avoid using artificial intelligence generation tools to create final Magic products. We’re now evaluating how we work with our vendors on creative beyond our products – like these promotional images – to ensure we uphold those values.”
This isn't the first time WotC has been involved in an AI-related scandal, as there was debate in late 2023 about whether the art in the 2024 D&D Player's Handbook was created using AI, as some claimed to have found an image of a dwarf missing one of his arms.
You can see some of the more problematic promotional images below in a post by @MarcoMA4PS who says “I think the entire ad campaign was made with images created by artificial intelligence, and then edited to give a hand-made image.”
This recent controversy has prompted some Wizards of the Coast artists to say they won't work with the company if it plans to use AI in this way in the future. One such artist was Jason Rainville, who recently wrote after WotC's apology: "This is what I was hoping would happen. Overall good news. I'll be closely monitoring their evaluation of their relationship with their vendors going forward. And whether these ads are going to be removed or replaced."
Source: ign.com
