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"There is also this notebook that features a map, which is included in the Instagram post but is nowhere to be found on the website. The map is too blurry to make out properly, but the geography looks inconsistent with other maps of Middle-earth."

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.

Here's the page for the notebooks-with-maps: https://www.moleskine.com/en-us/shop/limited-editions/the-lo...
They aren't talking about the products themselves, they are talking about the ad images, such as [1], which yes, appear to be pretty obvious slop.

1: https://i0.wp.com/cjleo.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Moles...

> "There is also this notebook that features a map, which is included in the Instagram post but is nowhere to be found on the website. The map is too blurry to make out properly, but the geography looks inconsistent with other maps of Middle-earth."

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.

> Ads need to be truthful.

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.

Doesn’t it seem more plausible that the marketing shots are AI (where the “generated by AI” note appears) rather than the cover designs themselves?
Turns out it is exactly that, the OP's post has an update from them:

> 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!

This doesn’t explain the cover (seemingly not used in the final collection) with a hallucinated map on it. Maybe they only used generative art for mockups, but they did use it on a cover design.
Shouldn't it be against some kind of law for marketing shots to not actually be of the product? I know there has to be some leeway, but a hallucinated image is clearly nothing to do with the actual product.
Does it matter? If you are opposed to buying AI art wouldn't you also be opposed to buying art from an AI ad?
If you can't even tell it's AI and need to be told... then what's the problem? Personal preference? It's like only enjoying paintings if the artist used horse hair and horse hair alone for their paintbrush.... A very arbitrary constraint
You really underestimate the LOTR fandom if you think they can't tell that the map is wrong.
Look at the names on the map. You don't need to be a LOTR superfan to tell something is off.
If I forged a Picasso and convinced someone to buy it, did I do anything wrong?
Because the existing cultural understanding of art is that someone took the time to create what you’re experiencing. AI generated “art” subverts that expectation. It feels deceptive. Honestly it reminds of Duchamp’s Fountain and similar works, which some people hated for more or less the same reason.

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.

The AI art debate reminds me a bit of the blowback from Miles Davis, a famous at the time jazz musician, recording Sketches of Spain, which is not jazz.

His response was "it's music, and I like it".

Some of those pictures? I like them.

I find this post baffling. Would one normally demand angrily to find out whether someone used photoshop when making a product mockup? If not, why is this different? It only makes sense if you’ve made a political decision that anything associated with AI is bad, regardless of whether you would otherwise like it.
There're a strong disdain agains any AI among the artists. I've seen these kind of comments many times, like people getting upset someone uses AI-generated profile pic in Discord.

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.

No, but if they relabeled Belfalas as "DEI Rarmorth", I might question whether they have a head injury.
Quite a lot of people out there have made that decision. There's some sense of solidarity with artists, which makes sense, but I've seen plenty of angry messages about personal projects that were never going to pay an artist where they're still getting harangued with ridiculous sentiments like "just pick up a pencil yourself".
Depends on the photo, but yes, people do demand information about software used on photos, some countries even have laws for this. Authenticity is relevant in many areas.
How can you trust the product itself is faithful and doesn't have a map full of gibberish slop?

Isn't (wasn't) moleskine a premium brand?

moleskine doesn't even make good notebooks anymore. for a premium price you can get a notebook with paper that bleeds with a ballpoint pen. they've spent any goodwill they may've generated at one point or another and now its a dead brand.
Hard agree. There was a time when I really enjoyed these packs of tan, grid moleskins that had covers you could also sketch on. Really convenient. But the pricing was too much. Paying a premium for what is essentially a designer notebook.
They never made good notebooks. Compared to German and Japanese notebooks that even cost less, moleskine is terrible.
These look nice. It seems it’s been confirmed these aren’t AI generated. But want to say even if they were, I’d have no problem with them being AI at all. This is one of those wedge issues that people get all activated about (it felt like the conversation was more nuanced when the models were more of toys and had too many fingers like Stable Diffusion) but to me it feels analogous to someone being mad that someone isn’t being carried via palanquin through the market after the motorized scooter has been invented. Sure, the scooter isn’t quite as maneuverable and you lose a certain majesty, but it’ll get most of the job done in most of the cases.

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?

I generally disagree with your stance (though I respect it as your opinion) and would like to offer you a different view on this. It might take a bit to explain my point so please bear with me.

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.

> it’ll get most of the job done in most of the cases

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.

> it feels analogous to someone being mad that someone isn’t being carried via palanquin through the market after the motorized scooter has been invented.

It would be more accurate if for the entire journey, the scooter driver also extolled the virtues of slow, luxurious, human-powered travel.

“The market” isn’t being honest, robbing is of the ability to decide.
> The market will definitely make the decision here

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

> it feels analogous to someone being mad that someone isn’t being carried via palanquin through the market after the motorized scooter has been invented

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.

Do you think art is a simple commodity?
Because of everything that behavior represents, and the normalization of lying and deceit as a virtue.

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.

If you do want a good reason to make fun of moleskine and not buy their products, it's because they're all extremely poorly made. I don't have a single moleskine where the pages haven't separated from the cover/spine after a few years.
> Moleskine have not provided evidence of completely human-made artwork for the covers

> 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?

Pitchfork-and-torch-wielders are generally reluctant to put them down, regardless of what their target says.
I always assumed that any output from a generative model would be uncopyrightable.

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?

I think a lot of people are misunderstanding this.

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.

> Moleskine used to be one of the main notebooks for artists for a long time

Isn't that just a story they made up to push their product?

I think their next product should be a pre-written journal.

> 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 don't really have a problem with this - the designs look nice and don't have any of the hallmarks of AI slop. My issue is when the AI generated product is just bad, not merely the fact it was AI generated.
I can't imagine getting such a famous IP as The Lord of the Rings and doing AI slop for it.
Given that many of the images look to be derived from Wizards of the Coast's Magic: The Gathering Universes Beyond Lord of the Rings set without attribution, I'd expect them to be getting a strongly-worded letter from Hasbro's lawyers any moment now (and for once, I'd support that).
Temu/Etsy notebooks.