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An Interesting start to 2026 - More Art Theft and AI Nonsense
🕑 Added 2026-01-06 13:11:40 +0000 UTCHi all,
Many of you may have already seen via our Discord, but last night there was an earthquake in the TTRPG artist community. If you can spare five minutes I want to explain what happened last night, what has happened since, what my stance is and what we are going to do about it.
Note : There is a very good chance that what happened last night was designed to spark outrage for marketing purposes. With that in mind I might be planning right into their hands but I can't stay silent on this issue.
What Happened?
A popular creator BaileyWiki, released an AI tool called BatlGrid, basically it is designed to place AI slop over pre-existing maps for the purposes of creating variants.
If it was solely for his own content that is one thing but he was actively encouraging the uploading and distribution of the copyrighted content of other creators.
They even billed their 'tool' as a great way to imitate other creators work and style, mentioning Tom Cartos by name.
As for myself, our map the flying castle , and god knows how many others, featured prominently on the website and promo video without my permission, until I forced him to take them down! See the image here:
Rest assured, this is not a tool to empower creators but to steal from them. He offered vague promises of profit shares and guardrails but its all BS. He would profit while artists have their work butchered.
What happened since?
Unsurprisingly, the outrage from the artist community was huge. BW's discord was flooded with people (both creators and members of the wider community) complaining, clearly exhausted by yet another instance of GenAI slop inflitrating this community.
The pressure seems to have worked, with BW removing the references to other creator's work and (at least for now) disabling the ability of users to upload third party content to BatlGrid.
We will need to be vigilant however, as I am sure this is not the last we will hear of this.
My stance on AI
I want to start by saying that I do not judge anyone that uses AI for in their personal life. I understand that is can be useful, but that it is applications like BatlGrid that are toxic and morally bankrupt.
I have made no secret of my dislike for GenAI over the years, particularly in creative spaces. I, like many of you I'm sure, am frankly exhausted by the constant pushing of AI into every aspect of our lives.
With that in mind I would like to make may feelings very clear.
I hate what AI is doing to creative spaces. I hate what AI is doing to our ability to create and to think critically. I hate how AI is drowning out the product of genuine passion and hard work with low quality slop on social media platforms.
Yes, AI is here to stay. Yes, you can't put the genie back in the bottle and yes, AI is very powerful.
But human made content will always be better.
It might sounds silly considering i draw maps for a living, but I pour my passion and soul into my work.
I have indepth discussions with you wonderful folks here and on Discord about the reasoning and purpose behind many of the aspects of my maps. I lay awake in bed thinking 'maybe the bandit leader needs a toilet adding to their room'. :D
My work is deliberate, and thought out. To have my work and those of other creators pulled apart by AI slop machine and reconstituted as something it was never meant to be is heartbreaking.
My worry for the future is people won't learn things anymore. They won't develop passions if everything is just handed to them, they will miss out on the journey.
I had never drawn anything in my adult life until 6 years ago when I started drawing (terrible) maps for my private games, but that struggle to be better has sparked a life long passion and a whole new career for me!
How will we move forward?
We at RC will be doubling down on human made content.
AI has never been part of our artistic process and never will be but this is going to extend to everyone we work with.
The fantastic adventures that ShadowSteelStudio has been writing for us if a great example of the human made content we want to encourage.
Creators are really hurting at the moment so I'm also going to explore the idea of hiring artists to create scenary art for us as a way of investing in this wonderful community.
All of our releases will also come with a disclaimer specifically prohibiting the training of AI models or any third party manipulation of our artwork without consent. I fully appreciate that this will do nothing to ward off tech bros, but that doesn't mean it doesn't needs to be said!
I will also be including the No AI logo along with my watermark on all public/preview images.
And Finally....
I want to thank everyone in our Discord server last night for their kind words and support. I was honestly so furious when I first saw what had happened that I was shaking, but you wonderful folks really helped me calm down.
This is an amazing community and while many of you will not share my hatred of GenAI, you can appreciate how this blow, and many other over the last few years, has affected creatives like myself.
Feel free to discuss your thoughts in the comments but please keep things civil. This topic can be very divisive so lets remember that we are all friends here :)
Here's hoping that 2026 gets better from here!
Thanks for everything!
Cheers
George - The Reclusive Cartographer.
Comments
K. Antigone Trowbridge
It is really good to read a nuanced and principled stance on GenAI. AI is coming. But we can encourage, lift up, and celebrate the human effort and let AI have its place as a limited, human run tool for data extraction.
Leland D Vaughan
GenAi is just plagiarism it needs to be shut down wherever we can.
Magnus
Thank you for speaking out about this. I used to be a subscriber to BW and after seeing what they did I unsubscribed. Decided it would be a good idea to move my subscription money instead to this and the other creator (Snowy's Map) that has been directly wronged by the BW fool(s).
George Mason
thanks bud! glad to hear it :D
Hans Peter Bak
Bravo! 👍👍
Abdulrahman Abduljawad
Your hate for GenAi is absolutely valid. You have my full support boss.
