r/custommagic • u/WerdaVisla • May 02 '26
Discussion Can we ban AI art?
Title. WoTC ["allegedly"] using AI in their card art is already a problem, we don't need that shit here as well. Encourage people to take 5 minutes to search Artstation or Pinterest for a fitting piece made by an actual human who actually cares.
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u/Anewbus Do something spooky. May 02 '26
Great idea but I don't recommend using Pinterest, that's filled to the brim with AI "art" as well. Artstation is great though
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u/WerdaVisla May 02 '26
Fair, I've just gotten good at filtering out the slop. I wish more artists would move to Artstation, but also as someone who begrudgingly made an account to share my art a while back I understand the hesitation to link your portfolio to epic games.
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u/TheRealBlueBard May 02 '26
Fun fact you can turn of ai on Pinterest. It's not 100% but it did cut like 90% of it for me
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u/blindfremen May 02 '26
Artstation does not have very much Magic quality art IMO. It doesn't help that the search function fails when artists don't descriptively name or tag their work.
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u/WerdaVisla May 02 '26
Just search with mediums digital 2d and traditional, there's a lot there if you filter out all the 3d modeling and spammed texture pack stuff. I can only think of a few times where I've failed to find what I want after a few minutes.
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u/blindfremen May 02 '26
It's still not nearly enough. There are realistically only a small handful of acceptable pieces for each custom card design.
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u/WerdaVisla May 02 '26
I mean I'll take your word for it, this isn't a hill I'm gonna die on, but out of the ~300 cards in my custom folder, most come off artstation and I've never had issues.
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u/RainbowwDash May 03 '26
Encourage people to take 5 minutes to search Artstation or Pinterest for a fitting piece made by an actual human
Yeah, artisinal plagiarism is so much better than industrial
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u/justanunreasonablera May 02 '26
I mean.... AI posts here already get downvoted to oblivion. I genuinely don't think I've ever seen one with a positive number of upvotes. Banning them seems a bit silly and almost performative.
Amd while I'm personally not going to do it, I think custom magic cards is one of the few places where AI art is tolerable. I can't imagine a meaningful amount of the people on the subreddit are going out and getting art custom commissioned for their cards anyways, so it's not like it has an actual negative impact on artists.
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u/IlGreven Dreadmaw-free since 2017 May 02 '26
Or, a lot of people just recycle actual card art onto the cards...
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u/supergnaw May 02 '26
This bothers me for some reason every time I see someone's custom card with repurposed art like I'll get confused between the two cards as though I'll actually be playing both cards in my own game knowing full well I won't be.
It's an irrational botherment.
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u/CarelessNameChoice (It works) May 02 '26
I don’t mind it for silver bordered stuff, especially if there’s a funny edit. They do the same thing a bit in the older un-sets
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u/BastardJack May 02 '26
I dont mind it. Most people have an idea and just grab some art to have a completed card. I'm sure for many if they were making a finished piece they would make more effort on that front.
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u/Burger_Thief May 02 '26
I've learned recently that there are like a billion chaff commons + uncommons from older sets nobody remembers but have baller art. Those make for the bestart reuse.
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u/alextfish : Template target card May 02 '26
It's always confusing for old fogies like me who drafted those sets and instantly recognise the art. In fairness it's usually very well repurposed, it just confuses me because I strongly remember the original card.
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u/Analogmon May 02 '26
Which is even worse than using AI art from a legal and moral perspective since it's just straight up theft.
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u/Zorothegallade May 02 '26
Agree. And there are some posts where AI art is used and they do get upvoted, so it seems it's just a handful of people who just want to start shit and, as you said, performatively attack AI posts they see.
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u/Analogmon May 02 '26
Maybe instead we ban those types of comments then. Way easier and less annoying.
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u/jerdle_reddit May 02 '26
Yeah, I support AI art for things like this.
But AI art, not whole AI-generated cards.
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u/Zorothegallade May 02 '26
Yeah, building the custom card is the whole point of it. As long as the actual card design came from the user, I don't care about where the artwork came from.
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u/calsass_ May 02 '26
Agreed, or just draw a crappy stick figure. Anything is better than AI artwork.
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u/PrinceVorrel May 02 '26
There is so much cool art out there that you can easily use and credit to the artist. As long as you're not making money off of the art and just making fun little cards, there is nothing wrong with it.
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u/Raphiezar : Just Slap Partner on it. May 02 '26
The one thing I've noticed lately is an increasing number of posts without artist credit. Even the AI ones. AI is super easy to do and they STILL don't do it. I should mention I don't like AI art either, but I don't know if there's much we can do about it. If there is though, great!
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u/EverettGT May 02 '26
If you want to ban things, you have to be clear on why and what the problem is. When WotC or people they hire use AI art, actual artists lose money. No one here is getting paid so it makes very little difference.
And there is some good ready-made art is some cases, in other cases it can be surprisingly difficult to find an image that matches what you want.
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u/Retro1988 May 02 '26
This is such a polarising issue on this sub, I also don’t get the issue. We’re not making any money here, just having some fun and yes look for real art first but if nothing suits then I’d rather see a creative prompt-driven image than a stick figure. Maybe we should split off and have a custommagicAI sub!
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u/EverettGT May 02 '26
AI is leading to a lot of uncertainty and some bad results, which I understand, especially in the job market. Some people's way of dealing with that is to just try to ban the thing everywhere or pretend its not happening. That's not a solution. We can't stop this. All we can do is try to get the most positives out of it also.
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u/throwaway-awawa May 02 '26
creative prompt-driven image
"creative" lmao good one buddy
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u/No-Principle5857 May 02 '26
I'll say this... AI does genuinely go through something eerily similar to our creative process... So it is being creative but just in an uncanny valley way
Can explain more if needed!
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u/PlatonicLiquid52 May 02 '26
I see where you're coming from, but I disagree. To me, the major difference is that humans think, physically manifest whatever it is they're creating into the world, then adjust their process based on the sensory input they get from that. Meanwhile, AI essentially does it all through pure "thought". The input they get back through each iterative step in the process directly feeds back in to the system that generated the previous output.
That disconnect between systems is where I believe a lot of interesting things happen. Visual input, for instance, is used for much more than making art. Just putting a few lines on the page can trigger emotions or memories that have nothing to do with making art, yet do end up affecting the process. There's also more obvious examples, like getting feedback from other humans, and how you interpret that. You're also constantly thinking about unrelated things in different parts of your brain, you're hearing and feeling unrelated things, and, of course, human thought is time-dependent.
In contrast, all mainstream AI is purely deterministic. If you give the same model the same input and the same seed, it will generate the same output every time. Humans aren't like this. What that means is that AI is always going to be fit to minimize loss in predictions across the space of its training data. Humans, on the other hand, are essentially fit to generate a desired output by minimizing loss due to external input. It's a subtle difference when you are only looking at the results, but at the heart of it, they really are very different goals. To me, that's a very big part of what we mean by "creativity" when contrasting it with AI. Basically: making the best decision for the desired result at any given time.
You'll notice I also did my best to provide an argument without bringing up freewill. If freewill does exist in the mainstream conception of term, then there's basically no comparison. Even without freewill though, it's also important to bring up the fact that human brains are unfathomably more complex than NNs and other AI systems built around them. Individual AI models may very well store more information than a human brain, and run on systems with faster compute, but the architecture is incredibly simple when compared to a single organic neuron, or human brain anatomy as a whole. At the very least, that should call into question the magnitude of similarity between human and AI creativity.
And for the record, I'm an AI skeptic, but not truly an anti. I don't gaf if people use AI art on this sub and agree with most of the opinions here. Like, at the worst, it might slightly contribute in fueling our current hyper-capitalist AI dystopia, but only to an absolutely minuscule degree given the scale of the problem.
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u/Zorothegallade May 03 '26
There are also more steps to it. For instance, img2img transforming your rough sketch into an artwork. You provide not only the prompt and concept, but also the composition and shape.
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u/International_Neckk May 02 '26
I would like more of an explanation. It is in a weird uncanny valley, but humans seem to draw inspiration where AI can only really copy
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u/calsass_ May 03 '26
I do not like it because the entire system is made by stealing millions of pieces of artwork across the internet to make slop. Reposting and feeding artists work into that machine that actively threatens their lively hood are two completely different things
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u/Dlark17 May 02 '26
I personally love the ones where people just text describe what they would want for art.
Or crayon drawings. Crayon drawn customs are peak.
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u/nealcm May 02 '26
i also feel like the art credit rule is less enforced since the use of AI in the sub
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u/adamkad1 May 02 '26
Art is gonna seriously regress if people glorify any terrible drawings just because they arent AI. What will be the point in getting better if anything is going to be praised as long as ai wasnt used?
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u/Analogmon May 03 '26
This. I'm so tired of this mentality.
I'm not your mother and I don't have to put your shitty stick figure drawing on the refrigerator. Not all art is good just because a human made it.
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u/UristMasterRace This probably shouldn't be uncommon May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
Myself and others think that AI art looks better than a "crappy stick figure". You use stick figures if you want, and we'll use AI if we want.
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u/Witchy_Titan May 02 '26
This has gotta be the one place I don't care if the art is AI. I'm more interested in the gameplay elements of the cards to begin with, the image is just so it looks like a card
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u/Baelrog_ May 02 '26
I agree 100%. It's just for fun creative card design, not for profit, so I couldn't care less if it's AI generated. I prefer it over no art or stick man paint art
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u/VLKN May 02 '26
Seriously. Who cares
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u/JewJulie May 02 '26
This is LITERALLY a post about people who care
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u/1ftm2fts3tgr4lg May 02 '26
It's a post about the people who care proposing to force everyone else to care. It's obnoxious.
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u/JewJulie May 02 '26
Nice perspective but incorrect its a post proposing a community requested idea to be formalized
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u/Tokaido May 02 '26
Totally agreed. These custom cards aren't usually about the art, it's just a placeholder.
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u/PrincessOfZephyr that ass May 02 '26
If it's not about the art, then there's no reason to use harmful technology for the art.
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u/Possible-Leopard-601 May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
There is one. If you use real art your post is removed.
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u/Due-Primary6098 May 02 '26
Making fake trading cards seems to me like the single most legitimate use of ai art I can think of.
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u/Spiritual-Spend8187 May 02 '26
Honestly my main problem with ai art or anything ai related is just people hiding it i dont really care if your thing is ai generated as long as its labelled as such and your not trying to hide it.
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u/TheGrumpyre May 02 '26
Unless your card concept is something generic like "A dwarf wearing armor" there's no way you can find art online in just five minutes. If you're doing something ambitious like designing a set with a coherent theme, getting credited artwork is a very time consuming (but still satisfying) process.
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u/jpz719 May 02 '26
Actual breakdown of options
Use AI - not exactly ideal
Use art you paid for yourself - no way in hell
Use art you didn't pay for - bad
Use no art - post gets blasted
Use art that already exists on a card - confuses viewers
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u/UristMasterRace This probably shouldn't be uncommon May 02 '26
"Use art you didn't pay for - bad"
In the years I've been on this sub, no one has ever considered this bad. It's a strictly non-commercial little side hobby of editing images and showing them to each other. And we credit the artist!
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u/RainbowwDash May 03 '26
It's significantly more literal art theft than AI art will ever be
If that wasn't your problem with AI art then what exactly was?
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u/Visible_Number May 02 '26
Custom Magic is one of the best use cases for AI art. Banning it makes no sense.
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u/firebead_elvenhair May 02 '26
Yeah, this guy is nuts
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u/Zorothegallade May 02 '26
B-But look at the upvotes! No matter that the comment section is mostly against him, he virtue signaled the Anti AI crowd to create the illusion of a majority, clearly we should defer to him! [/s]
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u/Warping_Melody3 May 03 '26
That's not exactky a fair comparison. Wizards is a big company that can afford to commision arrisrs. The people of this sub, mostly not. Especially since we can never make money of off this. Also the art isn't parricularly important for a custom card, its just there to make it look more normal.
Whilst personally i prefer using preexisting card art or pinterest, im not going to crucify people who make differenr choices to me.
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u/Huitzil37 May 02 '26
I made a card of the Nefasturris from DMC2. Nobody has ever drawn a Nefasturris, and there is no usable concept art. It is a very specific monster design that is not generic. For my Nefasturris card, I have exactly two options.
I can print a card with a Playstation 2 screenshot that looks like complete shit as the art.
I can use an LLM to redraw a PS2 screenshot into an image that looks like it should be printed on a card.
No other options exist. A stick figure is not an option. Paying an artist $75 for art is not an option. These are the only two options.
Why should I use the option that looks like complete shit instead of the one that doesn't?
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u/Tuss36 May 02 '26
Integrity. At least it looks accurate! Also unless you're intending to make a proper cube or something with the cards you make it doesn't really matter that much.
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u/Huitzil37 May 02 '26
The LLM version looks accurate because, get this, I can see it with my eyes and if it doesn't look accurate I can generate it again. Looking like complete shit is not integrity.
I literally said I am going to print them out.
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u/Mean-Government1436 May 02 '26
Yeah nobody here should be stealing copyrighted material for non-monetary use, so make sure you don't use any card frames from the game, or any copyrighted symbols like the mana symbols or tap symbols
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u/ArelMCII Layers are stupid. May 02 '26
And while we're at it, make sure you're not using any trademarked terms, like "tap."
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u/ChriswithK May 03 '26
I mean this person proposed taking people's art from their social media. I doubt they'd ask
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u/boltsnapboltsnapbolt May 02 '26
I disagree. Custom cards are not a product we are selling. No artist is getting undercut. A fun home project of building a custom set or something similar is the perfect application of AI art with no one getting hurt in the process. I have a few sets I've designed, and I have many specific things/objects I want in my art, and I want those objects to appear across designs and I want the same characters to show up in different scenes. AI can do this for you.
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u/Phobos_Asaph May 02 '26
The software is still trained on stolen stuff
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u/Analogmon May 02 '26
Using an artists work without permission? Kind of like when you put it on your card you mean?
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u/ArelMCII Layers are stupid. May 02 '26
I really doubt anyone on this sub has the artist's permission for the art they use unless they made it themselves. I know I don't.
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u/Quakarot May 02 '26
That’s true but like- isn’t just grabbing random images from Google also just stealing them?
I’m somewhere on the middle on this. I totally agree that it’s shitty that AI steals art for its engine, but in cases where you’re just doing the exact same thing anyway I’m not sure I see a huge difference.
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u/jerzyterefere May 02 '26
Not every AI model was trained on stolen stuff. VQGAN-CLIP for example was trained fully with art acquired with original authors' permissions. And Stable Diffusion was trained on stuff ,,stolen" from Getty Images and Shutterstock, which I'm personally not opposing.
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u/Tuss36 May 02 '26
It does suck that the well's been tainted on that. If it was originally sourced fairly then it'd be an amazing tool. It wouldn't be nearly as strong as it is now, but that's a good thing, being able to help rather than replace. But alas, a bit late for that now.
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u/sephirothbahamut May 02 '26
you can use models trained on openly licensed artwork. The results are "meh" but you can. You need to run them yourself.
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u/TheNebuchadnezzar May 02 '26
Maybe an unpopular opinion but this seems like a great use case for AI art, not sure why we’d ban it. It’s just custom cards for Reddit not like it’s for profit or anything.
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u/SharpenedOdachi May 02 '26
I completely agree.
I'm more of a lurker myself and am generally not a fan of AI, but getting mad over it in a niche part of a trading card game hobby gives me serious "old man yells at cloud" energy. There are a lot worse ways AI can be used I can think of off the top of my head, but making images for custom cards is one of the least harmful ones I can think of.
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u/Mean-Government1436 May 02 '26
Yeah, I don't get the messaging. "don't use AI, it steals from artists! Instead, steal from artists directly!"
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u/firebolt04 May 02 '26
AI doesn’t give the original artists credit or exposure. So from that perspective I 100% understand it.
The other thing is that custom cards aren’t being sold and I’d imagine most artists don’t have an issue with free advertising from a fan project.
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May 02 '26
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u/Mean-Government1436 May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
Plenty of artists consider publicly sharing credited works as stealing. I think it's stupid. But they do indeed think that.
I dont care about people using AI or using publicly available artwork on personal projects where no money is made. I'm more of a "you shouldn't have made the art public if you didn't want it to be used by the public" person.
But to say they're somehow different from each other is wacko. They're the same thing. If you accept one, you should be fine with the other. If you don't accept one, you shouldn't be fine with the other.
You and OP are perfectly within your rights to disagree with my view on usage of these things, but if you somehow make a distinction between both forms of "art-stealing" that's just internally inconsistent on your parts.
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u/Toberos_Chasalor May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
Plenty of artists consider publicly sharing credited works as stealing. I think it's stupid. But they do indeed think that.
As far as copyright law is concerned, they are correct. You might find it stupid, but laws can be stupid sometimes.
Simply crediting an artist isn’t good enough to be fair use. You also need to make the work substantially transformative, critical, a parody, etc, without being a substitute for the original work.
Taking the art of Lightning Bolt and making a card called “Lightning Storm” to post on Instagram is unlikely to pass that bar, even with credit to Christopher Moeller, much like how posting a lyric video for a song on Youtube generally doesn’t fall under Fair Use, even if you say “all rights to [band name]” at the start of the video.
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u/Mean-Government1436 May 02 '26
Which is why we all have to remember that this is a silly unserious hobby where maybe we don't have to think all that hard about the moral ramifications of putting a drawing of Superman or an AI picture of a vampire cat on a magic the gathering card
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u/Toberos_Chasalor May 02 '26
I’m not speaking morals, morally I think no harm is being done to the artists by making custom cards.
You and I never intended to pay them for their work in any scenario, so no real business was lost.
Still, that wouldn’t stop someone from sending Reddit a legally binding DMCA takedown notice if they really didn’t like us using their art. It’s within their rights as the copyright holder to decide how their work is and isn’t distributed online.
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u/sephirothbahamut May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
It is stealing
both legally andby dictionary meaning, regardless of feelings. Just because you credited the artist and the artist decides to not care enough to press charges, doesn't make it magically not theft.To think otherwise while complaining about generative AI stealing is pure hypocrisy.
Let's just be honest with ourselves and admit that most people in this sub, me included, are practicing theft.
Unless you purposefully look for artwork licensed with a license that allows for free modifications and redistribution, which is quite rare. Most of the times there isn't even a license written anywhere near the places where you download artworks.
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u/visser47 May 02 '26
just to clarify, training AI on an image is seriously not legally stealing. Regardless of your stance on AI, it just weakens the argument when you rely on this soundbite
theft is legally defined as: "Theft is the taking of another person’s personal property with the intent of depriving that person of the use of their property".
the crime, if it is one (which is contentious!) is more like copyright infringement.
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u/sephirothbahamut May 02 '26
I'm not a lawyer but I'm quite sure the legal definition of theft is different in different countries. In any case, comment updated
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u/Toberos_Chasalor May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
The point is that copy-pasting an artists work without paying them or getting their consent and using AI without paying artists or getting their consent are effectively equal from an ethical standpoint.
Either way, artists aren’t getting paid or asked if I can use their work for my random custom MTG card. Maybe that Pinterest artist doesn’t want you to repost their art even with credit.
Hell, if we want to get into the weeds, we’re literally stealing copyrighted and trademarked works from WotC without permission by using MTG card frames, symbols, WotC owned art, etc. Plus any other IPs you might be using for that really cool custom Super Saiyan Goku card you made.
While our specific use-case falls under fair use, that doesn’t magically mean we aren’t still using their copyrighted works. It just means we have the right to take them without asking for personal use. I don’t see why we should draw a moral line around the art frame when we’re completely fine with all the other infringement on the card.
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u/Cless012 Working on Starcraft Draft Set May 02 '26
How is crediting an actual artist and maybe even which site you found them on equivalent to using AI art?
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u/sephirothbahamut May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
Crediting doesn't make it not theft. Seriously how many people are going to reply like this? Unless you pay for redistribution rights or specifically search for artwork with an open license, you're stealing. Period. Writing credits only makes you feel better about your theft.
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u/Redzephyr01 May 02 '26
You are still using their art without their permission. If you care about their permission then you shouldn't use their art at all without asking. Either creating derivative works without permission is okay or it isn't, you don't get to have it both ways.
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u/Mean-Government1436 May 02 '26
Do you think the bad part of stealing art is not crediting the person you stole it from?
They're equivalent because you're stealing the artwork without permission. You know? The bad part?
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u/seraph1337 May 02 '26
Some of these people are really doubling down on telling you that crediting doesn't mean you're not infringing (technically correct), but they're also completely ignoring the point that that isn't what you were even saying, you were simply saying that they are not ethically equal. Things aren't just right or wrong, some things are definitely more wrong than others, but it seems apologists don't want to address that.
They're also apparently unaware or don't care that generative AI has far greater societal and environmental implications outside of just this use case that should factor into our decision to condone or tacitly endorse its use for any situation.
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u/TastyDinner5365 May 03 '26
This. How people use it is what matters. Always has been with every medium and that's exactly why artists usually see no problem with people who are honest about what they do and how they do it. (I don't see the vocal minorities as artists unless they've been drawing, painting and sketching things for long enough before moving on to tablets and computers when they can actually afford them all by themselves.)
The problem is the human if there is one. It's not a binary thing - intent is a big factor.
The fact many people seem to think (nuance - don't want to judge, and definitely don't want to where irrelevant because that's a misconception and rude) Pinterest (or many of those similar "I made a thing, I'm an artist, I own the thing" sites) is original art when most of it is reposts and a lot of the stuff in there even lacks the source on top of artist permission should be baffling but I'm not really surprised.
Yes, I'm for defending artists' copyrights (for good reason too). Yes, I'm for the ethical use of AI. Those are not mutually exclusive if done right - hell, even training your own model on your own art becomes a slippery slope with all the misunderstandings. It's crazy.
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u/UristMasterRace This probably shouldn't be uncommon May 02 '26
I agree whole heartedly! Custom MTG cards are seriously the least harmful use of gen AI I can think of!!
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u/jpz719 May 02 '26
My only sincere hope if we do is that people will critique the fucking card instead of going "AI BAD" on what's otherwise a cool design for the game
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u/Zorothegallade May 02 '26
Comments pointing this out are being downvoted. Guess the anti crowd hates being told to bring their impotent rage somewhere else.
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u/Underbridged May 02 '26
I don’t care the art is AI. I really dislike when a real card’s art is used. It throws me off.
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u/UristMasterRace This probably shouldn't be uncommon May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
> to search Artstation or Pinterest for a fitting piece made by an actual human who actually cares.
Are you going to ask the artist for permission before using it non-commercially for a hobby subreddit? If not, then why do you care if AI is using their art without permission for the exact same purpose?
I think AI art should be allowed here, and we should add a rule preventing people from harassing others for using it.
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u/ArelMCII Layers are stupid. May 02 '26
I also like how OP seems to think artists are the ones posting their stuff on Pinterest. For the most part, this isn't the case. Pinterest isn't an artist community. It's an image aggregation website that anyone can use to make image collections. It's really rare for anyone to post their own stuff to Pinterest, and even when they do, it's going to end up reposted by a lot of unrelated accounts.
I think AI art should be allowed here, and we should add a rule preventing people from harassing others for using it.
Agreed.
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u/Redzephyr01 May 02 '26
I don't think it makes a whole lot of sense to ban AI but have it be totally fine to post other people's art without permission.
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u/UristMasterRace This probably shouldn't be uncommon May 02 '26
I agree with this 100%. I wish the AI haters would actually respond to valid points like this instead of just downvoting!!
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u/sephirothbahamut May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
There are reasons beyond theft to ask banning generative AI art: environmental impact, power consumption, effect of increased demand on electronics availability.
But the moment someone uses theft as the reason and in the very next sentence they suggest... stealing artwork yourself, that's when they lose me.
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u/visser47 May 02 '26
run it like the SCP wiki where every piece of art has to be creative commons
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u/Redzephyr01 May 02 '26
I really, really doubt that most of the userbase here would be okay with a rule like that.
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u/visser47 May 02 '26
yeah, i was tryna highlight how absurd wading into copyright shit in this kind of activity actually is
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May 02 '26
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u/Redzephyr01 May 02 '26
Because it's still done without the artist's consent. The credit isn't the problem and never was the problem.
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May 02 '26
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u/Redzephyr01 May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
If you don't care about getting permission from the artist then I don't think there's any coherent reason to ban AI in the first place. Either making derivative works without consent is bad or it's not, you don't get to have it both ways.
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May 02 '26
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u/visser47 May 02 '26
well one is actually taking an artists work and reposting it without their permission, and the other is a transformative process that posts something new, so there certainly is a difference :P
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May 02 '26
One makes no revinue off of someone elses hard work while sending traffic to the artist and the other took their work and is profiting off of it without credit.
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u/Redzephyr01 May 02 '26
People posting custom magic cards aren't profiting off of anything, and there are plenty of free AI models so the idea that using AI inherently causes corporations to profit is just wrong.
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May 02 '26
The models profit wether you pay for the gen or not. User numbers are how they generate their investment revinue and many models have started adopting ads as well.
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u/visser47 May 02 '26
can you explain how an AI using an image in its training data negatively impacts an artist?
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May 02 '26
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u/ArsenicElemental Un-Intentional May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
The AI tool is making the profit off someone else's art.
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u/Redzephyr01 May 02 '26
People using an AI to make art for game pieces to post on a small forum for noncommercial purposes is pretty much entirely inconsequential. Also, there are plenty of free models you can use that don't support big corporations so lumping all of those together doesn't make a whole lot of sense either.
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u/UristMasterRace This probably shouldn't be uncommon May 02 '26
I disagree completely that gen AI trained on publicly available images is "stealing", and I would be happy to discuss why.
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May 02 '26
Every major LLM has been proven to use stolen works that were not publicly available at this point.
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u/Zorothegallade May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
If anything I'd crack down on derailing conversations into insulting AI art discussion. Seeing the comment section of an interesting card go to absolute shit from a handful of people copypasting the AI manifesto for the umpteenth time is just sad.
"The art looks very awkward, the proportions are wrong and there's an arm coming out of nowhere" -> Constructive comment.
"You used AI, go die in a fire, you're the reason I can't afford RTX and a shower" -> Sterile argumentative bullshit.
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u/Dystopian_Sky May 02 '26
Using AI art for a silly gag or unofficial personal-use magic card is its ideal use. Nobody was going to make money off of it anyway.
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u/smugles May 02 '26
This sub really is the perfect use case for ai art. Just throw away art to put on a card to give it a bit more than a blank box or stick figure.
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u/EverettGT May 02 '26
WoTC ["allegedly"] using AI in their card art is already a problem, we don't need that shit here as well.
WotC is using it to avoid paying artists. No one here is paying anyone.
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u/OccultEyes May 02 '26
Taking someone's art without their permission is exactly the problem with AI art, is it not? How is what you suggest better in any way?
Using art found online, or generated via AI, is exactly the same copyright issue. Which means, exactly the same non-issue in this case of non-profit hobbyism.
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u/taw : Target winner becomes a judge until end of the next round. May 02 '26
No.
It's literally best use case of AI art. By now every single gaming studio uses AI art for this kind of placeholder art we do here.
Not a single person here is drawing card pictures here, or commissioning any pictures, so it's all placeholder art, and all of it is already AI in practice.
(and if you try to internet search, you have good chance of AI art anyway)
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u/sephirothbahamut May 02 '26
I agree in being against ML AI art overall, but i disagree in subreddits like this one. And the amount of people who share the opinion in your last statement without realising the hypocrisy is battling. You don't want people to use ML AI art made with models trained on stolen artwork, and the very next thing you say is you want people to steal artwork themselves? Seriously?
Sorry to break it to you, but that's still stealing. Unless you specifically search for artworks published with open licensing like Creative Commons, or contact the artist and pay them to get sharing rights on the artwork (which is something you would be asked to pay for), you're stealing no more nor less than ML models training. Giving artist credit doesn't magically make it not stealing, it's still stealing. This entire subreddit is based on art theft and was based on art theft for longer than generative AI has been mainstream.
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u/lilgizmo838 May 02 '26
How exactly would you go about determining if the art was made by AI?
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May 02 '26
Art credit is required already. If they cant supply credit from a verified artist then your good.
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u/Dlark17 May 02 '26
When people explicitly label their cards with "Midjourney" or whatever trashy AI generator they used?
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u/lilgizmo838 May 02 '26
Okay. That's totally cool, imho. I don't really care one way or the other. Sometimes it bothers me, other times not so much. I just find it hilarious and backwards when people try to use AI as a verification tool to identify AI and expect any kind of real accuracy. A lot of those "AI homework detectors" will identify sections of the Bible as written by AI, just as an example.
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u/smugles May 02 '26
Well anything made with Gemini hides a watermark that the ai can instantly recognize. But I agree mostly.
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u/alekseypanda May 02 '26
Can we? We can. Should we? No. We can argue day and night about the ethics of AI, but I dont think this is the place to do it, and it is not the mods job to enforce it one way or the other. Don't like it don't use it. Is not like everyone is asking permission to use other people work for the art when making cards.
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u/Just-Desk-3149 May 02 '26
I am generally against AI. But like YOU said, Wizards also uses AI. So why not go complain to the multi BILLION dollar company about AI instead of the random making custom cards?
Custom magic cards are (unfortunately) a perfect use case for AI art. Getting quick art that fits relatively niche things in seconds.
Also the mods on this sub can be strict at times with art (neither a good or bad thing) so its literally easier to use AI than it is to track down the source of that art you have on your card because your post can and will get nuked for incorrect art attribution.
Do I hate AI? Yes absolutely. Do I think it needs to be banned on this sub? Not particularly. I have a long list of things I'd rather try to change than AI art on this sub. And honestly its a fight you're gonna lose because this sub is inundated with AI art, for better or worse.
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u/SnipingBeaver May 02 '26
I used to check this sub every week at the least and stopped completely when I saw AIgen art became common.
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u/Tempest_True May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
Honestly...yes. Not because I have a problem with AI art in custom Magic cards (it seems like a good use-case for it, as I will explain further below), but because anti-AI people on here are rather unrelenting and their commentary about the use of AI drags down the quality of the entire subreddit (I'm talking the "I am ignoring the merits of this design but down voting because AI is bad" crowd).
Look, I like visual art. I love to draw and paint. I'm not great at it, but I've always liked it. I support the arts a bit, visiting smaller art museums when I travel, volunteering at a local sculpture park, promoting my friends who are up and coming artists. I would never try to profit at artists' expense.
I also like designing Magic sets. Not just cards, but whole sets. Making custom cards for my favorite TCGs is something I've been doing since I was like 7. It is itself an art form, right? A set of skills used for the composition of elements into pieces of specific conveyed meaning?
So...when I design Magic sets, I want to do the artforms of card design and set design. Part of that is wanting a coherent visual language for my set, along the lines of what WotC actually does with the guidelines they provide to artists. I don't want to spend hours hunting through the internet (which probably wastes more power and water than the equivalent use of AI...but I digress...) to maybe find the right stuff. With Chat GPT, I can start a project, feed it exemplars (including my own sketches), and make a somewhat coherent visual language for hundreds of cards. But I'm not too crazy about posting those labors of love on this sub because I expect it would be very discouraging.
All of this is to say, if I had my druthers, criticism based solely on the use of AI art would be banned. But a second-best way to do that is to just ban AI art in the first place.
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u/kytheon Design like it's 1999 May 02 '26
I've posted a few hundred custom cards here and always used artwork I found on DeviantArt, plus credited the artist. Sometimes one of those artists would contact me with an angry message that I was "stealing" their art and had no right to use it in any way, shape or form.
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u/Freemanthe May 02 '26
I hate how weirdly elitist this sub is about AI. It isnt an art sub where the integrity of art needs to be preserved. Its a place to share ideas.
People just have a hard-on for spotting AI art and calling it out when the author doesn't credit AI like they were trying to sneak one past. If the author does credit AI, the post gets largely ignored.
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u/1ftm2fts3tgr4lg May 02 '26
No.
There is a vocal minority here that has made it their entire personality to complain about AI art. The rest of us just want to make, see, and evalute custom Magic cards.
The mechanics, balance, flavor, etc etc of the card matter so much more than the art.
I'm sorry you care so much about this bandwagon you've latched onto. But your opinion can dictate how you make custom cards, not how others make custom cards.
I know and understand all of the reasons to be against AI art, but honestly I'll reserve my pearl clutching for more worthy problems.
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u/nitronik_exe May 02 '26
I agree, the whole reason I started making custom cards is so I can use pretty fan art while playing
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u/UmbralHero May 02 '26
I now find the vast majority of AI art ugly or off-putting, but it's sort of silly to ban its use here. Art is not the point of the sub, and it's not like it's taking away money from anyone to use AI instead of downloading a jpg from DeviantArt. As AI use becomes more and more prevalent I think it's very important that we learn to pick our battles
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u/PeoplePerson_57 May 02 '26
One thing I noticed about this is that 'I can always/usually tell' is usually a wildly inaccurate statement, no matter the context. The amount of posts, for example, made about The Roottrees Are Dead (a genealogy themed puzzle game) talking about how the uncanny or ugly AI images of people put them off of it every day is pretty high. It's a common topic in the steam discussion forums for the game.
All of that game's art was made by a pretty prolific artist in the board game scene. It looks uncanny in places because that's his style.
I just find 'I can tell when it's AI/I find it ugly and offputting' far more likely to provide false positives and true negatives than I'd like for people to boast about their sense.
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u/UmbralHero May 02 '26
Oh, I don't think I'm some perfect radar for it, and although I think I'm fairly decent at recognizing it I definitely have false positives. I also know my ability to discern it will diminish as AI art gets better.
The reason I brought up the fact that I find it ugly is because I don't think it matters if I do. The art is not the focus of the sub, and I don't think this is the place to be making some principled stand against artificially generated art
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u/stijnhommes May 02 '26
So you'd rather commit a copyright violation than use AI art? Noted.
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u/WerdaVisla May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
AI defenders really say the stupidest shit, huh.
Personal use is very explicitly protected under the Berne Convention. Unless you're making profit off your reddit shitposting [in which case, fuck sign me up, I've been missing out!] it's fully legal and not copyright violation.
On the other hand, AI image generators are in a series of [losing] legal battles and have been for the past 5 years or so because they extensively violate international copyright law in scraping art sites for use in their explicitly for profit models.
Think before typing <3
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u/redditfanfan00 Rule 308.22b, section 8 May 02 '26
personally, pixiv is also a good place to search. most, if not all, of the AI-generated art has tags indicating that they're ai-generated and can be filtered away during searches.
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u/EvanBleu The Unstable May 02 '26
I'll do you one better: let's bring people to make their own art for cards (even if it ends up being stickmen or some shh)
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u/Corsaer May 02 '26
I would like to very strongly but politely disagree. Pretty much echo all the other comments.
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u/Achowat May 02 '26
Lot of people talking about the "ideal use case" for the water-guzzling theft machines. But, maybe we don't need to use the water-guzzling theft machines at all? Maybe the real water-guzzling theft machines were the friends we made asking the way.
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u/Achowat May 02 '26
Four responses about water usage. I presume that's because they'd be fine with an Ecologically Efficient Theft Machine.
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u/Redzephyr01 May 02 '26
The "water-guzzling" thing is misinformation. It comes from a book called "empire of AI" where the author misread some statistics and wrote that it used 1000 times as much water as it actually used. The actual amount it uses isn't any more than the amount that watching a youtube video would.
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u/UristMasterRace This probably shouldn't be uncommon May 02 '26
The entire Internet (including Reddit!) runs on water-cooled data centers.
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May 02 '26
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u/Achowat May 02 '26
My brother in Christ, I didn't use the word "destroyed" at all. And I understand that's it's not AI's "fault" or whatever. But at the end of making a hamburger, you end up with a hamburger. At the end of using the Theft Machine, you end up with...nothing?
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u/trashmantis42 May 02 '26
I'd be in favor of this. I agree with the other person that it would be in line with the sub's rules for artist credit.
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u/nxwtypx May 02 '26
The downvote and block features Reddit has implemented will let you curate an AI-free experience on this subreddit, you performative busybody.
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u/jacobiner123 May 02 '26
Its kind of ridiculous how exact you have to be with artist credit in order for your post not to be removed, but when using an Aigen image, you just put the model on the card and its all good. That almost encourages using AI to upload your cards here.
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u/Possible-Leopard-601 May 02 '26
Talking from my own experience. I don't use any art since my past post were remove due to me not being able to pin point the artist. So I understand those who use AI to avoid their post being taken down for a random reason that nothing has to do with what is written on the card.
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u/Analogmon May 02 '26
No.
And you crediting the art doesn't make it not stealing. It's still stealing.
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u/Brief-Kangaroo4960 May 02 '26
It's fine to ban AI art with things that the art matters, but here it doesn't really matter.
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u/No-Principle5857 May 02 '26
I don't talk much, but I feel this opinion could be helpful. The issue with WoTC and AI, is that in a capitalist economy takes away from artists who make a living off of selling their art. Assuming we exist in a post-capitalist society, AI art would be more okay(not necessarily good). Here, I assume, no one is commissioning an artist for their art, and therefore no one loses anything to AI.
However, I do see a moral wrongdoing in supporting AI because of that. So, some form of restriction would be better than an outright ban.
Edit, TL;DR : Basically it matters that no one makes money off this, and that AI companies will improve their art 'tools' regardless of if a group online uses them or not.
I do not support AI art.
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u/crushcastles23 Mod May 02 '26
Mod statement: We have no intention of banning AI Art any time soon. If you want to downvote it, absolutely do that.