Popular tabletop roleplaying map-maker Inkarnate has reversed its position on generative AI, announcing a complete ban on AI-generated art for its forthcoming user marketplace. The decision follows a significant backlash from its community.
The company confirmed the new policy on Reddit, stating that publishers on the new marketplace must agree not to use generative AI. The Inkarnate team will vet all submissions to ensure compliance. A reporting system will also be in place, allowing users to flag potential violations, which the company will investigate.
In the announcement, Inkarnate cited community feedback as the primary driver for the change and highlighted the legal and ethical issues surrounding AI models. The company said in a statement,
The majority of popular generative AI art tools (“OpenAI”, Midjourney, etc.) do not publish their training data, and there is no way to verify the image authors, or copyright status of image data used to train these models. Therefore it cannot be verified that copyright violations, theft, misuse or license violations are not occurring. This is unacceptable, and needs to be addressed.”
This move is a complete U-turn from the company’s previous stance. Only weeks ago, during a Q&A on Discord, CEO Ingmar indicated that the marketplace would allow AI-generated assets, provided they were clearly labelled. The idea was to let consumers “vote with their wallets.”
That position, however, was the culmination of a series of missteps that angered the platform’s user base. The controversy began with a sudden, poorly communicated decision to more than double subscription prices for new users. While the price hike was eventually rolled back in response to the outcry, it was quickly followed by the discovery of an outsourced advertisement for Inkarnate that featured AI art.
The combination of the price increase and the perceived embrace of AI led to widespread calls for a boycott from artists and Dungeons & Dragons players who use the tool for their campaigns. The new, firm anti-AI policy appears to be a direct response to this intense community pressure, aiming to mend fences with the creators who form the core of their platform.
