Tabletop map-making website Inkarnate allows, then bans AI-generated art in a user-driven win for human artists

One of the most popular online tools for digital tabletop map-making is Inkarnate, an easy-to-use website that has found itself struggling through a string of controversies in recent weeks. In mid-September a sudden price hike looked like it would more than double the cost of an annual subscription to the site, which unlocks advanced features like additional textures and hi-res map exporting.

This increased subscription fee was not announced in official channels, and turned out to be a whole tapestry of underlying factors rolled into one poorly-communicated case of sticker shock. Inkarnate is planning on rolling out version 2.0 of its service in the coming months, which will both add new features and improve existing ones. This was also coupled with a seven-year lack of price hikes and extras like early access being included in that final dollar amount.

While the community was still puzzling over a greatly increased subscription cost suddenly appearing in the site’s FAQ section, ads for Inkarnate featuring obvious AI-generated slop began appearing on Reddit. An inspection revealed giveaways such as walls blending into roads, streets filled with bushes, and malformed half-turrets. Users were understandably upset that a company whose mission is to empower humans to create art was using AI to advertise its product instead of something actually created with its own tools.

Inkarnate was quick to respond and throw some water onto the fire by acknowledging the mistake and explaining that a new outsourced marketing firm had used AI image generation without its knowledge or permission. But the flames were rekindled higher than ever by the company’s confirmation that the upcoming marketplace, which would allow users to share and sell their map and token art, would allow AI-generated images.

Despite promises to clearly flag any marketplace assets created by AI, the response from the community was overwhelmingly negative. Many of the people who use sites like Inkarnate and play tabletop games, like this author, view AI-generated art as a soulless leech on the artistic forces of humankind which blatantly plagiarizes actual artists while simultaneously making it increasingly difficult to make a living in a creative field. If you want evidence of that, ask an AI assistant for a guide on the 11.0 meta achievement from The War Within, You Xal Not Pass, and take a look at the mangled and error-ridden response you get that quietly lifts from (and craters the click-throughs to) the actual human-created guide that I wrote in January.

The official Inkarnate response to this backlash was tepid, with CEO Ingmar initially shrugging off concerns and endorsing a policy of letting users “vote with their wallets” when deciding whether or not to purchase AI-generated assets. This is exactly what the user base seems to have done, with the string of missteps being enough for many to cancel their subscriptions (or at least post their intention to do so).

Just a few days later, Inkarnate’s leadership team posted an official announcement that detailed a reversal of the AI policy, outright banning any AI-generated assets from appearing in their marketplace. The community’s response to this has been almost universally positive, with thousands of reactions to the Discord post and thankful comments on Reddit. While the reasons given were community feedback and their research into the methods and mechanics of the generative AI art industry, it’s not a stretch to imagine that a real-time look at plummeting subscription numbers may have also influenced this policy change.

At the end of a roller coaster of a September, Inkarnate’s community (and creative humans everywhere) can chalk up one in the win column in the ongoing struggle against the vampiric cloud hovering over modern artists that is generative AI.