Wizards of the Coast Sparks Controversy For Using AI in Magic The Gathering Promo

Another day, another company trying to play it dirty and save money by replacing fully capable human artists with generative AIs. The latest such controversy was sparked by none other than Hasbro's Wizards of the Coast, who relied heavily upon artificial intelligence to generate visuals for a marketing campaign for Magic: The Gathering.

For context, last week, the company shared a now-deleted promo for MTG on Twitter, featuring an artwork you can see attached above. Attentive viewers quickly pointed out that parts of the illustration seemed off and featured weird inaccuracies similar to those present in AI-generated images.

Despite an abundance of screenshots pointing out the exact spots where such anomalies were the most apparent, Wizards of the Coast insisted that the image was crafted by human hands, dismissing claims of AI involvement. "We understand confusion by fans given the style being different than card art, but we stand by our previous statement. This art was created by humans and not AI," commented the company.

After enduring several days of criticism, WotC has finally confessed that AI played a role in generating the promotional image, saying that while "a human did the work to create the overall image", some AI elements had "crept into [their] marketing creative."

In a manner typical for such situations, the company primarily blamed a third party, an anonymous "vendor" in this instance, claiming that WotC's fault was not in using AI but in overlooking it and failing to adhere to their policy on generative AIs shared in December 2023.

Needless to say, the nonpology offered by Wizards of the Coast left the community dissatisfied, with many commenters lambasting both the company and its response:

Twitter user MarcoMA4PS further pointed out that it is highly likely that other images of the promo campaign were also made with AI and subsequently edited to give the impression of being handcrafted illustrations:

The news comes on the heels of Hasbro's decision to lay off 1,100 employees, equivalent to about 20% of its entire workforce, right before Christmas. With massive job cuts and the use of AI, the company has managed to draw criticism on two fronts in less than a month, leaving many concerned about the future of Hasbro's and Wizards of the Coast's beloved IPs.

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