Golden Demon Awards are given out by Games Workshop in official miniature painting competitions. The 2024 Golden Demon entry guidelines include a note under the FAQ section which was not present in previous years' guidelines. Answering the question "Am I allowed use Artificial Intelligence for any part of my submission?" It simply replies "No."
This is likely in response to the controversy surrounding the winning entry for the Single Miniature category of the Golden Demon Awards 2023, Neil Hollis’ piece, Exodite. The controversy was not over the miniature, but the jungle background, which was created using the AI-generated tool Midjourney.
Hollis, in an episode of The Painting Phase, defended his AI use by pointing out the difficulty. He explained that he had "probably done 200 different prompts" to get to where he needed to be, and that "formulating [the AI] took a long time." This doesn't help to defend his work against the criticism that Midjourney is based on stolen art. It's one AI tool that is the subject of a class-action lawsuit filed by artists for using copyrighted artwork as training material.
Hollis brought up the subject during the interview. However, he only mentioned that other generative AI tools are trained using internal art libraries owned and maintained by the software's developers, not to explain why Midjourney was used instead. In response to critics who questioned his winning of the award, Hollis simply said: "The people who are angry on the Internet are a certain kind of person. I think we call these virgins." I suspect that it didn't help to win him any fans online.
The court case against Midjourney which also includes claims against Stability AI, DeviantArt and other parties, reached a significant milestone when the judge ruled that it could proceed with some claims dismissed. However, he allowed copyright and trademark claims to be brought against Midjourney.
Interesting news
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