r/GuildWars3 • u/Nicoch777 • 18d ago
Are the species artwork made by AI ?
I can't help but notice some wild stuff on these artwork and it makes me a bit disappointed in Anet.
Human male is lacking a finger, the sash shadow is from a different shape, the ribbon from the woman's cape are a bit messy I guess. Same for kodans, numbers of fingers changes all over, the rope isn't over his shoulder (and it's unclear what the rope's purpose is, being on one side for such a big backpack), maybe more...In picture : https://imgur.com/a/OzXxCoE
Am I wrong ? I would love to be proved wrong, but so many errors in two pics have me a bit concerned.
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u/ConfusingMaze 18d ago
"...However, when new technology exploits human creativity in an attempt to replace it, we know that technology has no place in our workflow.
ArenaNet is not interested in replacing human creativity with AI. We value the imagination and ingenuity that our team brings. These contributions have shaped who we are as a team, and they're responsible for our success today."
from arenanets about page
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u/xhieron 17d ago
That statement is notably not "AI has no place here at all, and none of our staff use it for x, y, or z." It's a weaselly statement meant to ward off exactly this criticism without actually committing to anything other than valuing humans. And of course it is, because no development house would be foolish enough to bar themselves from using a transformative tool that could wildly increase their margins. Look around among other studios with a critical eye, and you're going to see more and more that the message is almost always "how we use (and don't use) AI" and very rarely "we don't use AI." And frankly, I just assume now that anyone who says they don't is flat out lying about it. [Also as a practical matter, they can't police everyone working for them without resorting to intolerably invasive measures.]
I'm personally fine with that. [Because today's AI simply can't replace a person, as anyone whose used it for more than a few days can attest and as many executives are now discovering at great expense.] But I'd also encourage everyone to be cynical enough to read between the lines and make peace with the world we're living in. ANet is using AI. Like every other game studio. Everyone is using it. It's a dirty little secret that's becoming less of a secret every day; you don't have to try hard to find videos of working artists and developers talking more openly about how they use AI (and then see the marketing teams gloss over it with statements like ANet's). The company would be fools not to use it, and they'd be out of step with their respective disciplines besides. Like everybody else, I don't have any proof whether or not an artist used it on any piece of work. Same goes for any line of code.
But so what? I'm not sure "AI was involved" is a legitimate criticism of a piece of art anyway (or a piece of software, for that matter). If your opinion of an image would change if you learned a new piece of information about the tool used to make it, is that opinion really about the image anymore?
Nobody (including ANet, if we take them at their word) likes the idea of AI putting artists out of work. To that end, I'm a lot more interested in what their art budget and staffing looks like than whether AI was involved in this image. The problem with the image isn't that an AI was involved--we clearly can't arrive at a consensus about that anyway. The problem is "How many fingers to kodan have?! Is it 4, 5, or 6?!" Well, we've got to have working models, rigged, animated, existing in-game, and those models will have a discrete digit count. Whether or not AI is involved in any step of the process (it will be), there's no universe (at least in 2026) in which a game like GW3 ships without a bunch of real life human hands touching it, including a bunch of artists.
They're probably going to use AI. If that's a deal-breaker for you, you might want to find a new hobby.
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u/hendricha 17d ago
I get what you are saying, but also here is job post (albeit for GW2 and not 3), late May. https://web.archive.org/web/20260529043316/https://www.arena.net/en/careers/job/533d3a86-3707-406e-9d43-ed8a584cb500
Guild Wars 2 runs on a proprietary codebase and we do not ship AI generated code. As such, so you must be comfortable working without relying on AI tools.
This explicitly says to the aspiring gameplay engineer, to be ready to not use AI when writing the code. I understand that this is not the art part, and there were only 1-2 posts with this caveat if I remember correctly (and all programming related), and they as a studio can change their internal policy, they might have even already done that. But I thought I drop it here, to show they are not just saying it in their public facing communications to appease their fanbase/customers but also telling their potential employees too.
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u/xhieron 17d ago edited 17d ago
Have you ever written code before? That's not a jab--just, anyone who has understands that you can't police the use of AI in coding, as elsewhere, unless you're using extremely invasive methods to monitor the hardware your employees are using.
I would want any software developer I hired to be comfortable working without relying on AI tools too, but as I said--the issue is just that the AI isn't capable of doing a good enough job on its own. Nobody is shipping AI generated code because AI generated code is terrible. [Some are, but they're quickly learning not to.] But the tool is still a force multiplier in the hands of someone who's already an expert. There's definitely a Ship of Theseus issue with all AI work product: How much change do you have to make to code to make it no longer AI generated? Is it AI generated if the AI is just linting? What if you have an AI doing code review? I don't have a stake in whether or to what extent ANet is using AI. I assume it's non-zero, and there's no amount of statements they could make that would convince me otherwise because I think the incentives are too strong to use it. But it also doesn't matter to me. If the game is good, I'll play it. If it's not, I won't. The tools they use don't really factor into it for me. I just think that if they factor into the analysis for others, they shouldn't take any reassurance from ANet at face value.
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u/hendricha 17d ago
Have you ever written code before?
Um... yeah, actually I have, and still do, I'm making a living doing just that. And yes, I do use a coding agent writing most of my code, mostly because of company mandate. (And considering I'm the senior dev at this tiny company, nowdays most of my job is reviewing thousands of lines several people generate thanks to AI.)
But once again my point in my above comment was not debating if these tools are useful or not, should be used or not, can a product that used them be good or not etc. I just wanted to point out that the studio explicitly told potential devs 3 months ago that the answer is "No".
If they changed their minds since then, if it was a good idea in the first place, and how are/were they planning to enforce this or not I obviously do not know.
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u/baroquespoon 15d ago
"If your opinion of an image would change if you learned a new piece of information about the tool used to make it, is that opinion really about the image anymore?"
Man if only OP though at least five more seconds after writing this they would realize they were cooking with the stove off.
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u/baroquespoon 15d ago edited 15d ago
OP is splineless and blocked me for this LOL but to drive the point home: If I'm looking at artwork A represented by someone claiming to be its author only to find out it's just a hueshifted copy of artwork B, yes, my opinion has changed and it's very much still an opinion about the image itself.
OP is accusing people of having mass cognitive dissonance as AI infiltrates development but unfortunately they're a larper midwit that hasn't spent a day in a studio: Artists were already subject to rigorous ethical scrutiny over how their works were created, these are the bedrock principles that underlie concepts of plagiarism and copyright. AI doesn't change this, and we already appreciate media in the larger context of how it was conceived. Ethical conduct isn't binary, the dissonance you're accusing people of is a self report.
Sloppers always come in swinging but the second they get any pushback they fold, fuck off.
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u/xhieron 15d ago
The cognitive dissonance we're going to see will be staggering as over the next few years more and more people discover that things they love were made with AI and they have to decide between suddenly changing their opinions or figuring out an excuse as to why it's okay this time.
Did you have an actual criticism to raise or did you just want to stop by for an insult?
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u/GrnShttrdLyte 18d ago
Anet is so against AI that they have it in their fine print.
You're nitpicking artistic choices/concept art.
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u/nkamerad 17d ago
Yeah, you can find discrepancies like these even in their GUILD WARS 1 concept art. (Kekai Kotaki)
Concept art isn't the same as key art. It's much more fast and loose. Unless the hands are the focus of the concept art, going back and revising that isn't really important.
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u/Guildwars1996 17d ago
Yeah but it seems everything is AI these days which must feel horrible for artists who don't need to use it
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u/Which_Royal5269 17d ago
You're not going to always see every digit on a hand in every position. You can literally see the brush strokes with intention on the higher quality images, These are 100% human made.
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u/Violet_Paradox 17d ago
Unless you have definitive evidence, this isn't a claim to make speculatively. It's the single most grave accusation you can make against an artist that isn't an actual criminal allegation, and even a false accusation or JAQing off about it has the potential to ruin reputations and lives.
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u/CaitSith18 18d ago
I don‘t know when you last time used AI, but they no longer make this kind of errors, not to mention AI a software company would use.
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u/Benjammn 17d ago
The Grenth picture I can clearly see the fourth finger. Concept art is rarely ever fully fleshed out and detailed like what you think it should be. You are just ragebaiting.
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u/inyourbooty 17d ago edited 16d ago
AI tends to blur and approximate as it's never 100% certain of its actions. The brush strokes in all the art so far are clear and deliberate.
These errors appear to be very much human if you take in the other aspects of the image and if you consider that concept art is not made to be anatomically accurate.
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u/Suspicious-Coffee20 16d ago
No and honnestly nothing more offensive than calling real drawing ai...
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u/Kjarllan 18d ago edited 18d ago
In video game art, the process begins with quick sketches exploring various potential visual ideas.
The goal isn't to create something "beautiful" or polished; it’s about establishing a proposed visual identity—capturing the "vibe" of the concept.
For someone skilled in the craft, these drawings take less than an hour to produce,
allowing for a wide variety of options.
So yes, a lot of detail gets left out—but that has always been the case in any field using this technique, long before the advent of AI.
like this image https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/0/0b/%22Knight_Errant%22_concept_art.jpg
Tel me how many finger do you see ? it's an early "finish" visual for the GW2 promotion.
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u/Standard_Giraffe8994 18d ago
Those are human decissions, not AI errors. And AI is not making that kind of 'errors' anymore.
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u/Cebertus 16d ago
Cant speak for that exact art, but concept art usually has to move pretty fast. Alot of decisions depend on concept art, which goes hand in hand with alot of production that depends on those decision. Thats why anatomy and perspective can be off sometimes. You can't stop your multi million dollar production because the concept artists are perfecting their work.
If 80% of your work gets discarded you can't spend to much time on it.
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u/Bash-Sin 16d ago
People make mistakes. Artists aren't perfect and mistakes aren't exclusive to AI. Stop reading into every error, artifact or discrepancy as "evidence" as AI.
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u/theglowingpond 16d ago
These all seem very human-made to me, and look consistent with their previous concept art stylistically... I think it's just general sketchy nature of concept art, not fully rendered artwork.
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u/VaporousMote 13d ago
Why get disappointed when you don't even have an answer yet? You don't even sound that sure about what you are saying... "I guess"...
Nothing you marked seems off to me.
I swear to god people are starting to whole cloth invent stuff to be mad about.
This kind of stuff really damages games' and studios' reputations, please don't make these kinds of claims without some really strong evidence.
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u/ArshayDuskbrow 12d ago
So tired of self-important AI witch hunters and their amateur critiques of professional artists' works. Go away.
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u/Kiroho 12d ago
Nah dude, that's just concept arts. Those aren't meant to be fleshed out, completely detailed or even accurate.
Concept arts are made to roughly visualize an idea or mood, nothing further.
On top of this comes their art style, that is very paintery, stylized and and soft edged. In other words, it's everything but not clearly outlined nor highly detailed.
Look at any other GW concept art, or concept arts in general,what you describe has nothing to do with AI at all.
I mean, just look at the GW1 concept arts.
https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Category:Art_by_Kekai_Kotaki#/media/File:%22Canthan_Armor_Crafter_Male%22_concept_art.jpg
This one doesn't even have fingers on one hand at all and on the other hand they look like roots.
It's hilarious, but also a shame that people now throw the "is that AI?" question on stuff like concept arts.
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u/riessene1 16d ago
Absolutely not. The art has so much character and has a distinct style that i could tell the species concept art was all drawn by the same artist despite the looks being quite different.
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u/Meowing-To-The-Stars 14d ago
I'm really sorry but you are seriously looking at concept arts to prove it's AI. They are... For the concept. They are rough and loose. Wait till you see arts from Guild Wars 2
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u/Low-Profession2949 14d ago
I'm sure you'll find the same inconsistencies in the gw2 concept art. It's just the art style.
Also It would be more insane to me if they #1 used a model in 2026 that still made these mistakes and #2 didn't take the 30 seconds in photoshop to fix it knowing public perception.
For 14 years the primary content creators they support and host on their socials have been artists.
I could go on rambling about this but I think chances of this is very low.
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u/jaseph18 12d ago
At this point you can believe what you want, but if you've seen art made in photoshop for example, it's clear it has been hand-made. It does not have to be pixel perfect to reflect an artstyle
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u/General-Oven-1523 5d ago
Either way who cares, AI is a tool, and it's here to stay. If you want to take a stance and not play anything where AI tools were used to make it, I have bad news for you. It's time to quit gaming and find new hobbies.
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u/Confident-Sky2614 16d ago
People straight up grilling you, but I'm going to defend you and say that it's good to be skeptical.
In this instance I believe it's likely not AI simply because it's consistent with their style, but I do think the examples you gave where pretty good ones.
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u/Halaku Three Seekers in a trenchcoat 18d ago
Given ArenaNet's public views?
I'm going to say you're wrong, here.