Last week we reported that Wizards of the Coast, the IP owner of "Dungeons and Dragons" and "Magic: The Gathering", was once again accused of using AI in a promotional image for "Magic: The Gathering" after announcing a complete ban on the use of any form of AI in its works. At the time, the company denied the accusations from netizens, saying that the promotional image was "created by humans."
However, many fans did not buy it because there were many obvious traces of AI generation in the picture. According to the AI-generated picture detection tool at the time, this picture was indeed "extremely likely" to be generated using AI. This led many users to believe that either Wizards was lying or that the "artist" who created the image had deceived Wizards.
A few days later, Wizards of the Coast has deleted the image and the post denying the AI creation, and admitted its mistake. "Well, we made a mistake before when we insisted that the promotional images we posted were not generated using AI," the company wrote on Magic: The Gathering's official Twitter.
"As you, our conscientious community, have pointed out, it appears that AI components found in industry-standard tools like Photoshop were inadvertently included in our marketing creative, even though a human did the work of creating the overall image."
The publisher continued: "While the art comes from vendors, we have a responsibility to ensure we deliver on our commitment to supporting the amazing human creativity that makes Magic: The Gathering so great. We have made it clear that we are asking the artists, writers, and creatives working on the Magic TCG not to use AI-generated tools to create the final Magic product. We are now evaluating how we work with our suppliers on creative aspects outside of the product, such as these promotional images, to ensure we live up to these values."