The Pokémon Company has booted a bunch of fans from a Pokémon card art contest, after claims several entrants used AI to aid their submissions.
A statement today from The Pokémon Company claimed that “select entrants” among the competition’s top 300 quarter-finalists had been found to have “violated the official contest rules”, leading to their disqualification.
The Evolution of Pokemon Games
The statement does not name AI specifically as the reason behind the action being taken, but a quick glance at the company’s previous announcement on the matter shows an array of complaints from fans on social media pointing to what they believe to be AI art making the contest’s quarter-final cut.
The Pokémon TCG Illustration Contest is a semi-regular oppurtunity for fans to show off their artistic prowess and win both prize money and a chance at getting their creation printed on an actual Pokémon card. The top cash prize is $5k, around £3940.
300 pieces of artwork from finalists were posted to the Pokémon website two weeks ago, though various entrants (some with strikingly similar artist names) were quickly highlighted as likely being AI-generated.
There’s no explanation by Pokémon today of why it failed to detect likely AI involvement before now, or why numerous similar author names were not flagged as suspicious.
Still, at least this time Pokémon players weren’t disqualified for flinging poo.
