Chaosium Rejects AI Art, Promises it Won't Be Present in Any Games

The subject of AI art has become a hot button topic as of late. While I can see some potential for the technology myself, it is being used for many terrible reasons. This has led to many artists (especially smaller and independent artists) to become very vocal about opposing it. Over the weekend, Chaosium, the company that releases awesome games like Call of Cthulhu, made an official statement regarding AI art. I’ll include the whole statement below, but in short, the company has announced that they will not allow any AI art to be used in their projects. They also mention how there’s a good chance that courts in the United States will probably be dealing with cases regarding the technology and at least some members of the European Union will be passing legislation soon regarding AI programs. I think they’re right in the practical matters and I also agree that we need to be sure to support artists.

Art is important to Chaosium and our artists deserve a lot of credit for our successes over the past several years.

We’re updating our art contract templates to include the provision that AI art programs are not to be used: the work needs to be the product of a human artist who can vouch that they created the piece and that it does NOT contain unlicensed derivative use of someone else’s work.

We are concerned about the ethics of AI art and its impact on the livelihoods of artists, and the ability of artists to maintain control over use of their creations.

And on a more pragmatic level, we also believe there is a significant chance that the US courts will, before long, declare that AI art violates the copyright of artists, most probably thousands of artists. There is also the possibility that the European Union – or at least a few significant EU members – will pass legislation that effectively prohibits the webscraping AI programs that now exist.

So, in short – if you are doing art for us, don’t use AI.

The next time you pick up a Chaosium game, you can be confident that all of the art there is the product of a human artist who is passionate about our games and the worlds we create, rather than a set of computer algorithms and prompts.