There are few miniature painting contents as prestigious as the Golden Demon, Games Workshop’s showcase for the artistry and talent in the Warhammer hobby. After the March 2024 Golden Demon was marred by controversy around AI content in a gold-medal winning entry, GW has revised its guidelines, and any kind of AI assistance is out.
The Warhammer 40k single miniature category at the Adepticon 2024 Golden Demon was won by Neil Hollis, who submitted a custom, dinosaur-riding Aeldari Exodite (a fringe Warhammer 40k faction that has long been part of the lore but never received models). The model’s base included a backdrop image which, it emerged, had been generated using AI software.
Online discussions soon turned sour as fans quarrelled over the eligibility of the model, the relevance of a backdrop in a competition about painting miniatures, the ethics of AI-generated media, and Hollis’ responses to criticism.
Games Workshop didn’t issue any statements at the time, but it has since updated the rules for the next Golden Demon tournament. In the FAQs section of the latest Golden Demons rules packet, the answer to the question “Am I allowed to use Artificial Intelligence to generate any part of my entry?” is an emphatic “No”.
These rules will be in effect for the Golden Demon tournament taking place at SPIEL Essen, Europe’s premier board games convention, October 3-6. Warhammer miniature painters with big dreams for their Space Marines will find the updated guidelines on the Citadel Color website.
We’ll note, as we always do, that Artificial Intelligence is a misnomer for media generating tools like Midjourney. They are powerful but limited pattern recognition and pattern generation tools. While they can be very useful if deployed for a task that suits their limitations, they don’t know what they’re doing any more than a sieve knows the difference between sand and rocks.
There are signs that AI tools could be reaching the limit of their abilities: absurd Google AI search summaries, such as when the system claimed that the Blood Angels are traitors, are as entertaining as they are unhelpful.
But the fact these tools can produce genre media for less than it costs to pay an artist has the potential to disrupt livelihoods in the tabletop gaming industry. Check out our interview with industry insiders talking about the Pandora’s Box of AI if you want to learn more!
Source: Wargamer
