Absolutely unconscionable.
Ads need to be truthful. They can't just make things up that aren't actually in the product. It's literally false advertising.
I'm not against AI, but I am against deceiving people. If you can't be bothered to actually check your AI's output, you shouldn't be using it.
1: https://i0.wp.com/cjleo.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Moles...
It's very 2026. I had my AI give me a two paragraph summary of the LOTR, so I could be knowledgeable about it. Then I had it check the map, and it said it was fine, so I'm happy.
Since when? Ads are full of made up shit. Even the products are often presented in a way where it's obvious that something is not real.
> Thank you for your comments. We just wanted to confirm that all Moleskine notebook covers are created by our designers, while AI was used to enhance the background of these images. We hope The Lord of the Rings inspires you!
Does that make me more creative or less? I’m not sure.
https://www.moleskine.com/en-us/shop/limited-editions/the-lo...
A new tool exists that reduces labor and makes something previously out of reach accessible to everyone. I don’t really care about the unemployed palanquin operators, I just care about achieving my goals.
The market will definitely make the decision here and just like photoshop was just too good to pass up, more and more art you interact with is going to be AI generated. The smart artists will just lie about it, because why wouldn’t they?
> but they also have not credited an artist or provided any proof of human creation
What kind of "evidence" or "proof" would satisfy the poster?
And hence, if a company produced, say, notebooks whose only distinguishing feature was being decorated with a generated image, then anyone else would be within their legal rights to copy it wholesale and put the exact same image on their own notebooks.
Therefore, if a company wants to manufacture actual intellectual property, then they need to hire an actual human to produce it.
I'd love to hear if anyone knows: a) Is this interpretation accurate in any relevant jurisdictions? b) Has it ever been tested in court?
This is not some random tie-in to the LOTR franchise. Moleskine used to be one of the main notebooks for artists for a long time, and as the article mentions some of their notebooks have featured artists in their cover, their manifesto is all about "timeless power of handwriting" and "put pen to paper, and unleash your unique voice", etc. Having a company with that reputation and those connections to the art world just go with some AI slop for this collaboration is a slap to the face to its own users for potentially selling some notebooks to unsuspecting LOTR fans.
It's the enshittification of a brand once loved by artists.
Isn't that just a story they made up to push their product?
> Take your AI usage to the next level, with Moleskine! It's not just a thought partner, it's the author of your deepest thoughts!
> Imagined by Moleskine, generated with AI.
I am not equating AI slop with Marcel Duchamp, however. His work and what he did was very much intentional to evoke the sort of reactions it did.
And? I don't care. Is the art good or not? I'm not searching for someone to admire, I just want good music
His response was "it's music, and I like it".
Some of those pictures? I like them.
I get that they're scared. They should be: it was difficult to make a living for many artists even before AI. The market was already oversaturated and they had to accept low-paying irregular jobs. But now there's literally no light in the end of the tunnel for 99.9% of artists.
That being said, boycotting AI use will get them nowhere.
I used to commission avatars every year or two from a specific artist. It wasn't super cheap (hundreds of dollars). At the end of the day though, spending hundreds of dollars, waiting weeks, and then maybe getting 85% of what I wanted doesn't make sense when I could instead spend ~$0, wait 30 seconds, and get 98% of what I want.
In my view, artists should be moving up the 'stack'. If they are a commission artist, they should be having customers come to them with their '98% efforts' or only taking on commissions that either mean too much, too elaborate for AI, or otherwise sensitive.
Humans want art. Humans love pretty things. AI will never replace the entire need for artists. I see it as getting rid of the bad commissioners (price sensitive, beggars, etc) and making it easier for people to express themselves thereby making an artist's job easier to extract info from their commissioners.
(AI 'art' also has the fascinating, and possibly unique, property that, the more you look at it, the worse it is; it is fractally bad, in that the badness tends to crop up in small details more than anywhere else. I actually kind of enjoy it in small doses for this reason; it's fun to play "spot the broken thing".)
Isn't (wasn't) moleskine a premium brand?
And if you don’t know LOTR lore well enough to be able to do that, why do you care?
Using AI for creative purposes, specifically ones where the creative input is the goal, is one usage of AI that I strongly dislike. Art has always been seen and used to express something. It could be emotions, it could be a perspective, it could be a political opinion, or something entirely different. Every person doing art has an intention behind their performance. The intent may not even always be obvious to the artist, and sometimes the intent is money, but its there nonetheless. The end result of that intent can also be good or bad art.
For me it doesn't really matter what the thought behind a specific piece of art is, as long as there was one. I may not like a specific piece of art or even the intention behind it, but I also don't have to. I may not even understand a specific piece but that's also fine.
With AI, there is no intent. The AI isn't thinking. It doesn't know why a pixel was placed where it was placed, its just going off an algorithm and data that it was trained on. There was no idea, no thought, behind it.
The person prompting the AI is not the artist. They are not the creator and no matter how much work they put into the prompt, the result is not their creation. AI is not a tool in the traditional sense of how we might view a hammer or a camera, its an executor. If I were to go to Fiverr and tell a person to create an image for me, would you consider me the creator of that image? I wouldn't and I think most other people wouldn't either. The process of commissioning an image on the platform might even be exactly the same. You form a prompt, send a message to an artist, get a result, ask for refinement until you're satisfied with the result.
I don't think that the parent comment argued that they are, but okay.
> If I were to go to Fiverr and tell a person to create an image for me, would you consider me the creator of that image?
Can you consider a movie director to be the creator of a movie? They are just telling other people what to do.
This is not a very high standard for art.
Particularly not in this case, when the current art is a reference to, and for fans of, art that was all about authenticity. It's also art on a product that is very much not aiming for the 'just get it done' market.
If all I care about is the destination, then sure: use the most resource-efficient method. In this and in every other situation where there are other considerations, reducing everything to efficiency is absurdly reductionist.
At some point, a significant increase in resource efficiency improves certain aspects of many things, even art.
Was it? Was the reason you enjoyed it because a human wrote it? Highly doubtful
It would be more accurate if for the entire journey, the scooter driver also extolled the virtues of slow, luxurious, human-powered travel.
I don't understand this, the market is not a divine entity, you can choose to be passive about it and let others decide, but there's nothing wrong with people pushing "the market" towards what they see is right. Big corporations do it already so it's perfectly fine for people to call attention on this, campaign against it, etc ... which is what this article is doing
If I ordered a taxi and a palanquin arrived, I would at least be asking questions. Although I would still have an issue buying any AI-generated artwork, it would matter a lot less if it were clearly labelled as such from the outset.
A lot of things used to be hand crafted. The care and raising of horses was a respected profession, each horse has a different personality, but we use cars instead now. That doesn’t mean nobody raises horses, if anything the profession has become more prestigious and less of a commodity because the only people raising horses are people who really want to raise horses. Regardless, I’m going to ride my bike (if I can), or drive my car to the store when I’m getting groceries. I’m not thinking about the horse breeders every time I use my cargo bike to get groceries.
Similarly, we’re all free to go out and spend $8,000 on artisanal resin river flow tabletop carved from a single old growth tree. They’re beautiful and I’ve certainly dreamed about it. But a very nice wooden IKEA kitchen table built to exacting specifications and fit for purpose is a mere $899. What we lose when commoditizing these things we gain in access and affordability. This is a good thing, even if there are fewer people making these things.
One last example, since it was one of the biggest catalysts of the Industrial Revolution, while we still have people making couture outfits for specifically for Kim Kardashian, but it’s a good thing that we all have access to textiles that would have been considered impossibly high quality (literally, the thread density and uniformity of the fabrics are so high) 300 years ago.
In retrospect these things are all pretty great, in my opinion.
I think it's important for a product with a design to have part of the value linked to a human, but the reality is quite different: the vast majority doesn't care.
Just go on Amazon a watch the volume of slop there, and people buy it - it's like our standards for taste are so low at the moment, it's a bit sad because it will only get worse.
That's kind of hyperbolic don't you think? We're not talking about people stating a direct falsehood. We're talking about people producing graphic media in a different manner than ten years ago and that not aligning with your sensabilities.
A mandatory disclosure has never been a requirement of artistic expression. I know some people care a great deal about exactly how something is produced, but that doesn't mean anyone has ever had an obligation to disclose the tools, media or sources used to produce a work.
The only thing that we are due is truthful statements about what is chosen to be disclosed. If an artist tells you they spent hours hand painting a work and it was not, than you've got something to complain about. Otherwise it's none of your business.
But it seems more extreme when the AI is recreating the art you are considering buying.
When I need a notebook, I just go into a store that sells them and grab whatever they have. I have a notebook for logging my exercises and another one for random stuff, I have no idea what brand they are.
Moleskin sells fashion items. Or, maybe, an idea of a certain lifestyle. I'm not sure.
Come on, they're selling notebooks with art on them. Cheap, AI-generated art, passed off as premium.
I'm not an expert in media production though but from the sparse amount of interviews I have seen a lot also write the scripts and are involved in a lot more than just directing.
I used ChatGPT to make myself a picture based on a concept of a story I’ve been kicking around in my head for awhile. That picture made me so happy. It just wouldn’t exist twenty years ago.
The efficiency we’re seeing now is in moving from idea to execution. I think that’s a good thing. The thing we’ll see now is curation of taste. People with good taste are going to be the ones to succeed in a market where there are no barriers to entry. I can understand why that would upset people who spent years cultivating a skill.
I'll agree with that incredibly-hedged claim, sure. I'm not against efficiency at all.
As before though, it's not the only consideration. It would have been even more efficient to give all the people with a copy of Girl with a Pearl Earring a blank canvas, or even nothing at all, but that would be missing the point.
I think they did. They specifically said how a new tool is available and putting things into reach for people that previously wasn't. In the context about creating art, that reads to me like they do mean that prompters are considered the creators.
> Can you consider a movie director to be the creator of a movie? They are just telling other people what to do.
If the "only" thing the director is doing, in the most literal sense, is directing then no, I don't.
I'm not an expert in media production though but from the sparse amount of interviews I have seen a lot also write the scripts and are involved in a lot more than just directing.
I think ultimately this is just something we disagree on :)
There are still inaccuracies, but I'm also not pretending to care about legacy like Moleskine.
I commission artists somewhat regularly, and if I had to name the top two reasons, they would be 1) I really like their style, and want a piece in that style 2) I want to support them so they can continue making the art I like.
Meeting my checklist of inclusions is important, but definitely secondary to the reasons above. (And sometimes the deviations are reflections of the artist's particular style and therefore welcome.)
Is your point that what you quoted is false?
> I used to commission avatars every year or two from a specific artist. It wasn't super cheap (hundreds of dollars). At the end of the day though, spending hundreds of dollars, waiting weeks, and then maybe getting 85% of what I wanted doesn't make sense when I could instead spend ~$0, wait 30 seconds, and get 98% of what I want.
...because you just gave an anecdote that shows the truth is "if someone is using an AI avatar, they might have been your customer before AI".
> In my view, artists should be moving up the 'stack'. If they are a commission artist, they should be having customers come to them with their '98% efforts' or only taking on commissions that either mean too much, too elaborate for AI, or otherwise sensitive.
That doesn't make sense. That's not "moving up the stack," that's the work drying up and only a small remainder of the most difficult/sensitive things being left. And that might mean being driven out of your profession because there's not enough left for you to feed yourself.
I stopped commission artists for avatars years before that because of "It wasn't super cheap (hundreds of dollars). At the end of the day though, spending hundreds of dollars, waiting weeks, and then maybe getting 85% of what I wanted"
I got tired of waiting weeks only to get honestly a middling result. I stopped buying art and won't go back because the economics don't make sense to me regardless of AI.
> only a small remainder of the most difficult/sensitive things being left
Yep. It's what happens to industries as technologies progress. Horse carriage drivers and elevator operators either found something more specialized or moved out of the industry. If someone is making a living off onesie-twosie low-dollar commissions and can't figure out how to translate that to something else in the industry, they don't have any other choice.
Personally I think a lot of technology progression is long-term positive for humans because it means humans get to do something more fulfilling than rote work. It's dystopian and awful but personally, it's a shove for artists to move onto better art.
Dude, you need to update your memes. It's 2026: technology progression means humans "get" to do more rote work as the fulfilling creative and intellectual aspects are automated away.
Have machines do the creative part of building the system, so you don't have to! Instead you get even larger piles of code reviews instead!
I'm not talking about the provenance of the work, but the content of it.
The people who want LotR merchandise do so because they care about LotR.
Either define what you mean by authentic, or let us assume that it's a synonym for "something I like"
The Lord of the Rings is about lots of things. Some of those things are orcs. When I say that The Lord of the Rings is about orcs, I'm not saying it's made by orcs, or that orcs were used to distribute it, but that orcs are something discussed within the text.
Similarly, when I say that The Lord of the Rings is partially about authenticity, I'm not talking about the way in which it was written, but the contents of the work. Authenticity is a theme in the books, discussed within the text.
