Wacom is perhaps the most well-known drawing tablet and drawing screen brand in the world, used by rockstar artists to draw tradiitonal art all the way to highly realistic CGI. Its because of this that Wacom has caused a stir after posting a New Year photo causing fury amongst some artists:
Great job @wacom for using AI generated image for your latest marketing campaign. For a company built on the the visual arts industry this ad feels akin to shooting yourself in the foot. Doubly disheartening as a Chinese seeing the dragon used in this way. pic.twitter.com/mjuV0y5zdz
— Hanzhong Wang (@ww123td) January 6, 2024
The issue stems from the social media graphic apparently using an AI image. Many artists have been very vocal about their opposition of images using generative AI and seeing Wacom use it has certainly caused many to be disappointed.
Wacom has since responded by saying it was not aware of the graphics being generated by AI. Wacom states that they have purchased the said image and used it without knowing its creative history. The Verge is reporting that Wacom sourced the image from Adobe Stock photos from a user named umair. The image is not marked as AI generated but that leaves the question of why did Wacom, the world’s premier digital drawing brand, not just hire an artist to create the graphic using their product.
While the arbitrary purpose of the social media seasonal graphic may not be as big, it does put to question the industry as a whole when a company whose whole livelihood depends on people who draw have people in their team decide that its more convenient to just buy stock footage, what more when AI-generated images become much more accessible those who can’t be bothered to work on them.
