“It’s theft”: Root artist Kyle Ferrin on the “slop” of AI art, and why publishers using it are “devaluing all of board games as an industry”

AI art’s ongoing spread into the board game industry over the last two years has been met by dismay, anger and fear by artists and illustrators working in the space. Many are concerned not only that the technology is built on artwork that has been stolen from them, but that their very livelihoods are at stake if publishers choose to make use of fast and cheap AI-generated images instead of hiring human artists.

BoardGameWire approached a host of tabletop game artists for their views on the technology in the wake of Wise Wizard Games becoming the latest well-known board game publisher to begin using AI generated images in its projects. One of the most powerful and heartfelt replies came from Kyle Ferrin, whose singular work across games such as Root, Arcs and Oath has become one of the most recognisable styles in board game art.

In this extensive response, Ferrin expresses his disgust at AI art’s lack of ethics, its creative limitations, and why publishers turning to it for their games are devaluing not just their own creations, but the board game industry as a whole.

BoardGameWire: What do you think about the process being used by Wise Wizard here? Does that properly address criticisms against AI imagery programs scrape artists from scrape art from artists without recompense or attribution?

Kyle Ferrin: No! It’s bad. I think that if you’re going to use AI generated images, you are shouldering the burden of everything those programs do to create those images, which is theft. They are using the entire internet, they’re using copyrighted works without permission, from sources both large and litigious. I mean, you’re stealing from Magic the Gathering, more than likely, if you’re searching for painterly pictures of dragons – you’re stealing from Wizards of the Coast in some capacity, because it’s pulling imagery from there. And you’re trying to wash your hands of the responsibility by saying, ‘Oh, we don’t know exactly what it’s pulling from’. Well, you take on all of it. You take on all of the responsibility when you get into bed with it. That’s just how that works. And I don’t think that’s acceptable.

It’s a huge drain on the environment. We know that large companies that are using AI have reported increased power usage last year – like, 100% of what they what they’ve used previously. It’s ridiculous that we’re using all of this energy to make garbage.

Would you ever use AI generated images in your artwork? Why, or why not?

The answer is, no. One of the reasons why is because AI generated images can only pull from existing material, and I can already do that. I’ve seen some people suggest that, ‘Oh, you can just use the AI thing as a way to form ideas’. And it’s like: forming an idea is the easiest part. Why do you need help with that part? Like the execution is the part that you’re supposed to be doing as an artist, even if you just think you’re being the set of hands. I’m sorry about my tone, but it’s so frustrating to me. What? Why would I want a program to look at Google Image Search and say, ‘Oh, here’s a lot of pictures of ducks. Let’s see what we can slap together’. I can already do that. I can look at pictures of ducks, and then draw inspiration from that and create something new. And the only thing that generated images can do is smash that stuff together and give you something based on that, but there’s no creative energy put into it. It’s all iterative, it’s not doing anything new with it. It can’t! It’s not possible for it to do it, it can only base things on what’s already there.

There’s the problem of theft, and there’s a problem of what it’s actually making being not very good. But I think one of my problems with generated images through AI, or what they’re calling AI, is that you can never get any better than what you’ve already done. Like, I look back at the work that I did 10 years ago, and I think, ‘Wow, I want to redo some of that because I’ve improved as an artist’, or I look back at some of my work even from five years ago, and just think, ‘Oh, is this cringy to me now’, because I know how I would handle that differently, or that I’ve improved as an artist. You can never do that if all you’re doing is regurgitating what’s out there already, and it’s getting to the point where you’re just going to be regurgitating regurgitated work.

If you search on Pinterest for a picture of a wizard, because you want some visual inspiration, and 80% of what you’re seeing there is generated AI garbage… you’re just basing your images off of images that are based on other images, and you’re never going to get anything new out of that. So no, I would not use AI generated images in my artwork.

What impact do you think the creep of AI images is having on board game art, and what further impact do you think it might have in the near future?

Okay, well, this is the part that I’ve been trying to avoid, because I feel like it sounds really mean when I talk about it, but when you use AI, whether that’s ChatGPT, whether that’s Dall-E, whether that’s Midjourney or whatever, to make your product, and then you’re going to try and sell it, the first thing it’s going to do is it’s going to devalue the work that we’re trying to do as board game artists. And I use the term artists not to just mean illustrators: I mean designers, everything. You’re devaluing all of that into just saying ‘this is content, this is not art we’re making’. This is not even a product we’re making. This is just content, it’s just stuff. ‘We love making stuff’. And it just feels like you’re devaluing the whole thing. You’re devaluing all of board games as an industry.

You’re saying, like, this is slop. Our customers are pigs, and they don’t care what they get, because they’ll just take whatever we give them. And boy, in that situation, do you want to be the pig, or do you want to be the slop mixer? I don’t want to be either of those [laughs]. I don’t want to be, you know, ‘come get your slop piggies’. When you go to the movies and you sit down and watch something and you feel like, ‘Boy, AI could have written this’ or something. I think about the Mario Movie, where it was just such a nothing burger of a plot – beautifully animated, but just nothing there, writing wise, and just saying ‘Boy, they just think we’re idiots’. ‘They just think we’re stupid and that we’ll just take whatever we want’. And you know what, they make lots of money, so maybe we are, but I mean, we can’t just bank on a reputation and nostalgia and be like, ‘we can just make whatever. We can just make garbage, and people will buy it’.

So that’s the first thing that it does, is that it devalues all of what we do. Secondarily – and I think that this hasn’t come up enough in the discussion – is that you cannot copyright AI generated art because it doesn’t belong to you. If you make it in Midjourney, you can’t be like, ‘This is my picture now’. No, it’s not. The whole principle is that it just exists. So if you make an image that is not truly yours, and then you make a game that uses that art – we know that game mechanics cannot be copyrighted either. We’re talking about Wise Wizard and so I’m going to use them as an example. They’re making a game called Draconis. I could make a game tomorrow called Jabronis, My Ponies, whatever I want, and use their exact art and game mechanics. I don’t think they would have any legal footing to stand on, would they? I mean, I’m not a lawyer, but they don’t own the game mechanics and they don’t own the art, so why even make that? Why make that? It doesn’t make sense to me. So in the near future I see, you know, if somebody makes a successful game like this – what legal footing do they have to stand on if bootleg copies are made?

Just as an aside, after the success of Root, we saw a bootleg copy come out of China where they did all of their own art instead of using mine. And I posted a picture of it, and I said, ‘Boy, this is gross’. And someone on Twitter was like, ‘Oh what’s wrong with this picture? That’s pretty mean to this artist. Tell me, what’s wrong with this picture’. And I replied with two words, which is: it’s theft! Like, I don’t think I need to offer any further criticism than that. And AI generative art is theft.

What would you say to a publisher who, for whatever reasons, say they can’t create and publish the game they want without leaning on AI generated images?

I’d say, don’t make it. Don’t make it. I’m not going to shed a single tear for somebody who says, you know – if you’re running a restaurant, and then they raise minimum wage and you say, but we can’t afford to be in business if we can’t exploit teenagers. Well, kind of sounds like you don’t have a viable business plan. Sorry about it. That sounds like a you problem – I’m not gonna be sad about it if you tell me that the squirrel meat that you’ve been using for your tacos doesn’t pass regulation anymore, and now you can’t have a squirrel taco stand anymore. Okay? Then I guess you don’t have a squirrel taco stand anymore. You don’t get to do that then.

So if a publisher comes to me and says, ‘We have this great board game idea, but we have to use AI art because we can’t afford to do it any other way’, it’s exactly that – you don’t get to do it then. Pay somebody. I see how much you’re making on the Kickstarter. Pay somebody. Like, you don’t want a better product in the end? Pay somebody. And if you’re using an artist who’s using AI: find a better artist. My goodness, I see so much talent without even really looking very hard on social media of people who would be great working in board games, who are doing web comics, or lots of different things. And they probably don’t even know that board game art is an avenue for them to have a career in. And if we embrace AI art in board games, maybe they don’t, you know? Maybe we’ve ruined it – but I would hope not. I would hope that somebody look around for 10 seconds on BlueSky or Tumblr or something and just say, ‘Hey, who’s doing fan art for…’ whatever TV show or game, and just say ‘I really like that style, we could implement that, I’m going to throw this person some money and see what we can do’.

And that’s part of why you do crowdfunding right? Is to kind of gauge the interest and get money beforehand to see what you can afford. Have an artist illustrate the box cover for you, and enough examples of card art that you can put together a board game Kickstarter, and just put an asterisk next to everything and say ‘art not final’, whatever, and then see how much funding you get, and then pay the artist to do the rest once you get a million dollars or whatever [laughs]. I don’t know. If I’m coming across as real frustrated, it’s because I am. It’s frankly embarrassing that this is a conversation we even have to have. Anyone who says ‘Oh, we need to do this’. They just looked at something and thought, ‘Wow, we can cut corners real good with this’, and they don’t have an artistic critical eye to see that what they’re making is actually not very good.