The Street Fighter 6 developers have confirmed that one of the winning entrants in the New Challenger Art competition was plagiarized and likely generated by AI.
For context, Capcom announced on July 21 the winners of the second Street Fighter Illustration Contest. A total of 26 illustrations were selected, with every character getting a New Challenger artwork added to the game, each created by a different artist. Unfortunately, after accusations of plagiarism regarding the Kimberly art, Capcom confirmed the situation and will work on removing it from the game.
The artist in question, who went by Luna Caballero on X (formerly known as Twitter), has since deactivated her account, which was only created this past June. The most damning pieces of evidence were compiled by user Hoodratt, who discovered popular artists within the fighting game community Hungry Clicker and Chun Lo got their work stolen for an Akuma contest submission.
The well goes even deeper as another Cammy illustration seemed to have been lifted from a Pinterest piece of art. However, the art that set off the alarms was the winning submission: a Kimberly piece that wasn't tonally consistent with the artist's previous alleged works and was ultimately found to be AI-generated.
Capcom responded on July 24, stating that an unnamed entry had violated the contest rules. The community and everyone in the know immediately clocked that the Kimberly art and artist were being disqualified.
The AI-generated piece of art will remain in the game during a voting process, with the top illustrations granting exclusive titles to the artists, as well as to all participants in the voting.
Following that, the Kimberly art will be replaced by another participant which has yet to be decided. All 26 New Challenger illustrations will be available at a later date.
It's a disappointing situation that alleged artists try to take advantage of a fun community engaging activity but at least the damage was reverted before escalating even more. Plus, Kimberly fans got an incredible piece by Hungry Clicker, the artist's way of clapping back.
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