Steampunk Workshop

My feelings about AI-generated imagery are not exactly a closely guarded secret. I hate it, and I especially hate when multimillion-dollar companies use it to cheat real artists out of work and then LIE about it. Which is what Wizards of the Coast did in a recent Twitter post promoting some new Magic cards set against a steampunk workshop background. The post was quickly swarmed with comments pointing out the obvious and sloppy use of AI to make the background, WOTC tried to lie to everyone's faces that it *wasn't* AI, then took the post down when it was clear nobody was buying their BS excuses.

While discussing this fiasco on Discord, I got the idea to see what it would take to actually make something like the image WOTC used. And since it had been quite a while since I'd done an art stream, I figured I'd stream the process. I figured since 8 hours was a typical work day, I'd see what I could get done in that time and hopefully prove some kind of point.

I didn't get quite as far as I would have liked during the stream, but I still got a piece I could be particularly proud of. No weird AI ugliness, and I didn't have to steal anything to make it. I also learned a lot of things while working on it, so whatever I make next will be even better. AI can't do that.

Imagine what an experienced professional could do in that same amount of time. Getting the chance to make promotional artwork for Wizards of the Coast could have been life changing for some lucky human artist, but they chose the quick and easy dark side. Here's hoping this screwup costs them a good number of the actual artists they did have working for them, and sends a warning to anyone else thinking of using plagiarism software to cut costs at the expense of quality and professionalism.

Finally, I've included solid and wireframe renders to put down even the slightest of doubts that I made this with anything other than my own two hands, and the full renders have been Glazed to deter AI thievery because it is well known at this point that AI users have trouble with the concept of "consent." I hope you bastards lose absolutely everything in these lawsuits.