Blizzard is investigating claims that upcoming Hearthstone hero skins are AI generated
Blizzard says it is investigating allegations that pixel art designs for new Hearthstone skins slated to be released as part of the The Great Dark Beyond expansion were created with generative AI.
The skins haven't been released at this point, or even formally announced, but were datamined earlier this month as part of patch 31.0. The initial reaction was quite positive—they do look pretty cool at first blush, after all—but on October 26, 1000_toasters posted a thread on X laying out their belief that the images were AI generated.
The thread has since been deleted, as 1000_toasters said they made their point (and also called on followers to «not harass the artist concerned or blizzard employees»), but not before it was covered, and thus preserved, by Hearthstone content creator Zeddy on YouTube.
The AI claim is quite well argued. The Hearthstone images themselves are suspect in relatively small ways—Malfurion's shoulder tattoo is wrong, for instance—but it's a closer look at the artist, Trey Fore, that really sends up red flags.
Some images on Fore's Instagram are «absolute AI classics,» as 1000_toasters put it: The wrong number of fingers, misaligned weapon shafts, objects going under what they should be going over, that sort of thing. «You can find tons of little details in a lot of their artworks that don't make sense, and things that a human would just not draw,» 1000_toasters wrote.
Hearthpwn writer Imik noticed other oddities in their own thread: Along with the incorrect shoulder tattoo, Malfurion's horns and hair are off the mark, as is the symbol on Doomhammer's Doomhammer. Small details, yes, but that's where the devil is.
I tried to generate something via the Microsoft AI image generator, but I only mentioned the color of the armor, the bun, the color of the body, and the horde banner… It automatically made the doomhammer logo «Horde» as well. So it looks like it could be tied to AI. pic.twitter.com/cnDDz4kpRQOctober 26, 2024
The situation came to the
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