DAXIONG ALLEGEDLY TRIED TO SELL A.I.-GENERATED IMAGERY AS HIS OWN ART

CBR posts:

DC has removed three upcoming variant covers by artist Daxiong (Jingxiong Guo) after allegations that Daxiong used generative artificial intelligence (A.I.) at least in part to produce the three variant covers for upcoming issues of Wonder Woman, Power Girl and Shazam. DC has already solicited new variant covers for each of the three comic book titles.

Rich Johnston at Bleeding Cool revealed that DC had made the move after a number of people online had accused Daxiong of using generative A.I. to produce the aforementioned variant covers. When the accusations were first made, DC made the statement, "DC Comics has longstanding policies in place that all artwork must be the artist's original work. We are looking into the specifics of this situation." This follows similar accusations about recent Batman artwork.

Award-winning colorist Jose Villarubia noted on his Facebook page that the artwork by Daxiong hit a 99% on a popular A.I. detector (Villarubia went into a number of other details in his post about his reason for why he believes that Daxiong used A.I. on the covers. This isn't a case of him randomly putting three covers into an A.I. detector program, there were indications, as Johnston noted in the Bleeding Cool piece, as well, that led people to believe Daxiong was using A.I. before any detector program was brought into things).

José Villarrubia posts:

How to ruin your career and reputation as an illustrator really, really fast.

Artist Jingxiong Guo, or Daxiong, had done a couple covers for US publishers over a decade ago. But his break would have been three covers for DC Comics' major characters Wonder Woman, Shazam and Power Girl. He normally works in watercolor. But instead of doing them himself, he made the very unethical decision to use AI to generate the images.

And of course he got caught. And he denied it, and even made fake "work in progress" photos of tracings of the AI images. And finally, DC replaced him, and are not using those covers.

 
There is a lesson to be learned here. Before the internet, it would have been easier to lie about how an image is made. But a digital image is a piece of data, and as fast as one can make one in AI, someone else can expose it (also using AI, BTW.)

Daxiong denied that he used A.I. to create the covers, telling YouTuber 2quadrinhos, "I haven't used AI, but I am an artist who was hurt in this witch hunt. I've been in this industry for over thirty years and my drawing has always been traditional by hand." As Daxiong notes, he regularly works in traditional areas of drawing, and often shares videos of him creating his art on his social media. However, while he has shared what he purports to be sketches of the above covers, he has not shown a process video of the covers, and critics of his allege that he created the "sketches" after the fact. In the same interview, Daxiong noted that an outside coloring studio colored the work. His critics would say, "Okay, then show us the layered files of the coloring, that would prove it wasn't A.I.." That he hasn't yet has bolstered his critics' claims.

He also noted, "DC and I considered changing the cover because the controversial image might affect their sales. It does not mean it proves that it is an AI work."