The Paraprismatic has just had a major update pushed that has removed. With that done, I wanted to lend some content:

When we released the Paraprismatic Tempest, it was pointed out to us that one of our art assets looked almost identical to a character from Wuthering Waves in pose and silhouette. We had never seen the character, so we didn’t know, but the similarity was close enough that we looked into the artist further. Upon finding inconsistencies in their work when closely inspected, as well as many odd signs of their work not being their own, we ran much of their work through AI detection software, which was almost entirely certain that their work was AI-enhanced.

When I had confronted them about possibly using AI before, they had given us an answer that was satisfactory. We had even had them, ironically, redo two designs for us that we found out were AI-generated, that we wanted them to convert over into being hand-drawn, only to just go from one AI rendering to another. When we confronted them about it this time, they admitted to using AI tools in their work in a vague way, and when we pressed them further about specific details, they went no-contact.

Let us be clear: as a company, we do not support the use of generative AI. I’m deeply embarrassed that I didn’t catch on to this artist’s work sooner, as with hindsight it’s relatively easy to see the signs. We’re sorry that we supplied work to our fans and customers that wasn’t completely hand-drawn. That artist has been removed from our workflow.

The affected works that they contributed to were Lana’s Fateful Vault, Dead Saint Record, Three Gentle Sins, and the Paraprismatic Tempest. They had also done several art pieces for the unreleased Blade, Bone, and Benefit, and Zagalhta’s Exolunar Collection, but those aren’t in anyone’s hands yet. We will be removing all of their work from those books, either heavily discounting or discarding our physical inventory of books with their art in them, and replacing everything they made.

We have seven artists fully on board right now to repaint, redesign, and replace their work in the books. Some will appear similar in pose and design, whereas some will be changed outright. This will set us back in terms of art asset production by about a month and a half, but we don’t see another way forward. Hopefully, the final products will appear stronger for it.

For the BackerKit books, this means there’s a delay in us sending out our print orders. Not a huge delay, but since this campaign put speed and efficiency up in lights, this is embarrassing to say the least. We are going to have a more rigorous vetting process for artists in the future to avoid this.

We’re prioritizing the content of books in the following order, though, since various artists are working independently, it’s somewhat scattershot:

• Paraprismatic Tempest (Done)

• Lana’s Fateful Vault

• Dead Saint Record

• Three Gentle Sins

• Blade, Bone, & Benefit

• Zagalhta’s Exolunar Collection