September News Roundup (2025)

Let's have a look at the most notable news of the past month in the AI art scene. You'll find a mix of encouraging updates, a nod to the long road ahead, and issues surrounding AI art that extend beyond the creative scene into the world itself.

Artist Alley Pushback

In a growing trend among artists' events and conventions, more and more pushback has become evident among both organizers and attendees alike. Dragoncon, one of the biggest science-fiction conventions in the United States, has joined in taking a firm stance against the use of AI among its art vendors. One table allegedly selling generative prints was reported to the event's organizers, who requested evidence to be provided of the seller's artistic acumen. After being unable to do so, law enforcement was called upon to escort the seller off the property. Quite a serious display of solidarity for the hardworking artists present!

Shortly thereafter, GalaxyCon followed suit in issuing an AI-art ban for all of their events. Per the president of GalaxyCon, Mike Broder: "The way artificial intelligence is currently being trained presents many ethical and moral issues that simply can no longer be ignored in our industry. GalaxyCon has a long, proud history of supporting artists and their creativity, and we will continue to do so as the fight against unethical AI continues." FanX, another pop culture convention in the state of Utah, provided a similar statement in support of human artists as well.

These are all additions to the growing number of events who have taken a clear stance in recent days, including Anime NYC, Anime Los Angeles, and Crunchyroll Expo, to name a few.

Increased Studio Pushback

More big contenders have entered the ring this month and made clear strides concerning AI involvement in their intellectual properties, including industry giants such as Warner Brothers and Disney.

Lorcana, a card game based on characters spanning all intellectual properties within the Disney universe, features various artists of exceptional caliber for their collectible illustrations, demonstrating the finest work that the brand has to offer. A concerned attendee at Anime NYC took a picture of a piece of work that caught her attention, reporting these concerns alongside her mother's recent purchase of his work for a considerable sum of money. (From a quick glance, notable aspects appear to include inconsistent spacing of the ladder's rungs, coloring inconsistencies, as well as perspective issues with both the floor and objects throughout the room.)

Word of the issue found its way back to an employee within the project per her post on X, who made motions to forward it to her creative director. An internal investigation confirmed the use of generative AI, after which action was swiftly taken to remove the artist from Lorcana's lineup altogether. While the artist made an announcement independently following this situation, no official statement has yet to be made from Disney or other related parties.

Lastly, joining in what has become a considerable number of lawsuits against AI art generators, Warner Brothers seeks to pursue legal action against Midjourney for copyright infrigement. Per an official statement by a Warner Brothers Discovery spokesperson: “The heart of what we do is develop stories and characters to entertain our audiences, bringing to life the vision and passion of our creative partners... Midjourney is blatantly and purposefully infringing copyrighted works, and we filed this suit to protect our content, our partners, and our investments.” Earlier this year, Disney and Universal entered the ring as well in their advancement against Midjourney's practices and the effects on creators within all of visual media.

Renewable Methods for AI Generation

As we know, the generation of AI-created works is incredibly deleterious to our environment. The amount of electricity required to enable this technology is abysmal, not to mention the need for obtaining raw materials that can step into possible unethical practices and use of toxic chemicals required for their processing.

To combat these important environmental issues, a system devised at UCLA and published in Nature aims to use renewable resources to assist in the development of AI generators -- most notably sunlight. The developers also aim to increase privacy in the generative process by use of unique optical phase patterns, creating what the authors call a "physical key-lock mechanism" that could potentially be used for secure communication and anti-counterfeiting.

Stay tuned for the latest updates in our next roundup publication!