LoL Comunity Accuse Riot Of Plagirizing Fan Art For Icons
A member of the League of Legends community has revealed that Riot might have stolen their art and altered it with AI.
Riot has made quite a few mistakes this year and it seems another one has been added to their list. While the production team of the LLA was called out for using AI badly in a video earlier this year, it seems that Riot still hasn't learned their lesson.
Recently, new icons for Wild Rift were revealed and two of them caught the attention of players who realized they looked eerily similar to fan art. When the artists were approached on social media, they revealed that they did not give consent to have their art used.
LoL: Did Riot Steal Art And Alter It With AI?
Recently, new icons for Wild Rift were released. With Zyra being added to the game and also receiving her Coven skin, Riot added in specific icons for her, along with other Coven champions like Evelynn. One Twitter user quickly found that two of the icons looked like fan art.
Another Twitter user also checked, finding the original artists of the fan art and a conversation they had on a Weibo, where it was revealed that the artist of the original Zyra art, as well as the one for the original Evelynn art piece never gave their consent to Riot.
LoL: All Broken Covenant Skins
Other fans also believe that the icons were made from the original art pieces and simply adjusted with Artificial Intelligence, rather than have an actual artist re-draw and edit the pieces – though let's be real what is worse int his case?
This isn't the first time Riot has run into plagiarization issues. In 2021 Riot was also accused of plagiarizing various artists' work for an emote as well. At the time game director Jonathan “Bellissimoh” Belliss stated that "for a lot of emotes [Riot] work with external artists" which is how something like this could have happened.
A similar situation could have happened this time around, wtih Riot working alongside other artists who then pass of other's work for their own without the company knowing.
For now Riot has not made any comment or statement on the claims of plagiarism though, but maybe the company will handle the issue behind-the-scenes.
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