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Nearly two weeks after the official announcement of 300 quarter-finalists of The Pokémon Trading Card Game Illustration Contest 2024, the event's organizers responded to the community's outrage over AI-generated entries making it to the list, issuing an official statement promising to remove rule-breaking submissions from the pool of possible winners and disqualify the individuals who had submitted them.
For context, in mid-June, Pokémon TCG revealed the top 300 artworks chosen from nearly 11,000 entries to advance to the quarter-finals, congratulating the participants whose submissions made it to what they called the list of "glorious artwork".
While most artworks were indeed glorious, many others were not as much, with the online community quickly noticing that some images were most likely AI-generated. Additionally, it was observed that some participants had submitted more than three works, a direct violation of the contest's official rules. Over on social media, Pokémon enthusiasts voiced their disappointment almost immediately, lambasting the competition for allowing machine-made entries to participate and even reach the top 300.
In response to the backlash, the team apologized for the inconvenience and announced that entrants who violated the rules would be disqualified, their works would be removed, and their spots in the top 300 list would be given to other artists participating in the contest. "We're committed to upholding the integrity of the Pokémon TCG Illustration Contest and appreciate fans' continued support as we celebrate the artistic abilities of the talented Pokémon community," the statement says.
Here's where it gets interesting. Despite the main point of contention revolving around AI-generated images being allowed to participate in an art-related contest, the event's organizers have not explicitly addressed the topic of AI even once, with their apology statement only promising to disqualify entrants who violated the rules, without clearly explaining which particular rules were broken.
Furthermore, if we were to open the official contest rules, we would find that much like in the announcement itself, there is no mention of AI-generated submissions, meaning that, in theory, they are allowed to participate, and the team's statement, which many news outlets interpreted as an intention to ban AI, only referred to participants with more than three submissions.
However, an argument can be made that section "B" of the rules' "MUST NOT" list, which prohibits artwork that "violates or infringes another's rights" from participating, could apply to AI-generated images as well. While this interpretation might (and, in all honesty, should) be valid, the legal status of pictures made by generative AI remains unclear, making it difficult to say for certain.
While the Pokémon TCG's apparent refusal to directly address the issue of text-to-image AI models participating in an art contest neither in the rules nor in the aforementioned statement is most likely a string of coincidences, we probably won't know for certain whether AI-generated submissions are allowed or not until the list of semi-finalists is revealed. Hopefully, as one commenter put it, the team did indeed do "the right thing" and only expressed it in vague terms due to some legal reasons unknown to us, mortals.
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