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Blizzard says it is investigating allegations that pixel art designs for new Hearthstone skins launching as part of The Great Dark Beyond expansion were created using generative AI.

The skins haven’t been released at this time, or even formally announced, but data was pulled earlier this month as part of patch 31.0. The initial reaction was quite positive (after all, they look great at first glance), but on October 26, 1000_toasters posted a thread on X stating their belief that the images were generated by AI.

Since then the thread has been removedas 1000_toasters said they made their point (and also asked fans to “not harass the artist in question or Blizzard employees”), but not before Hearthstone content creator Zeddy covered it and, of course, Therefore, it will be preserved on YouTube.

The AI ​​claim is quite well argued. The Hearthstone images themselves are suspect in relatively small ways (Malfurion’s shoulder tattoo is wrong, for example), but it’s a closer look at the artist, Trey Fore, that really sends up red flags.

Some images at Fore’s instagram They’re “absolute AI classics,” as 1000_toasters put it: the wrong number of fingers, misaligned weapon axes, objects passing under where they should be, that sort of thing. “You can find tons of little details in a lot of his artwork that don’t make sense and things a human just wouldn’t draw,” wrote 1000_toasters.

Hearthpwn writer Imik noticed other oddities in his. thread: Along with the incorrect tattoo on his shoulder, Malfurion’s horns and hair are out of place, as is the symbol on Doomhammer’s Doomhammer. Small details, yes, but there is the devil.

The situation caught Blizzard’s attention fairly quickly: community manager RidiculousHat said on reddit and unknown that the Hearthstone team is aware of the claim and will investigate it this week. And this is how things currently stand: there is no irrefutable evidence, but a strong smell of cordite floating in the air.

Regardless of how Blizzard’s investigation turns out, the allegations are yet another example of the burden of AI paranoia and the reflexive suspicion of art that inevitably follows. “Authenticity” rather than quality or intent becomes the central issue, leaving us, the users and fans, with a mess to sort out: Wizards of the Coast, for example, was forced to admit that Generative AI was used to make a piece of Magic: The Gathering promotional artjust weeks after saying he wouldn’t do it, and a few days after stridently denying it, all of which only came to light because fans complained.

The central issue in all of this is not that AI-generated art is “bad,” although it often is, but rather that removing the human element from art-making remove the intention. As editor Harvey Randall said last year, “There’s no mystery in how an AI generated a beautiful night sky unless you’re not familiar with the technology: it trained on a data set of thousands of other night skies and then made an educated guess.” “In more practical terms, it also eliminates jobs: as companies become capable of producing dozens of acceptable images with nothing more than generation software and a reasonably well-defined message, artists (people with skills, vision and actual capacity) intention—are inevitably left behind.

Of course, even game companies that aren’t specifically looking to reduce their payroll have their own issues to deal with when it comes to hiring outside artists, making sure they’re not just creating things with an image generator and a message. But they are the ones who “create” and, more specifically, sell the products in question, and that rightly makes it their problem to solve them. The fact that it seems like such a challenge is a big part of why this AI paranoia persists, and as much as it sucks, we should probably get used to it, because AI is an art. it’s not going to disappear.

I’ve contacted Blizzard, Fore, and 1000_toasters for comment and will update if I hear back.