Ultra mad? Fans are calling out what looks to be Games Workshop using AI Warhammer art. Here’s the breakdown, and the key evidence.
Games Workshop might want to grab a mop, because something messy just leaked. The Red Gobbo made his big Grotmas entrance and, well, he showed up wearing two pairs of goggles.
Not goggles sculpted on a hat, not a clever design tweak, but straight up one pair on his face and another on his forehead.
Let’s talk about AI Warhammer art, odd production choices, and how a company that bans AI in painting competitions is now being roasted for using it themselves.
Games Workshop’s CEO Just Drew a Line on AI, and It’s Not the One Everyone Thinks
Updated January 14th, 2026, by Rob Baer with the latest from Games Workshop on AI use.
Games Workshop finally said the quiet part out loud: AI isn’t getting a place in the Warhammer design process. CEO Kevin Rountree is pushing the “extremely cautious” line, and GW’s putting real limits on anything AI-generated, becoming an actual deliverable. A small circle of senior managers can poke at the tech, but it’s positioned as research, not something that touches the production line.
In other words, if you were expecting GW to slide into “AI-assisted Warhammer,” this is them planting a big flag for human-made Warhammer.
The real headache is everything around the studio, not the studio itself. Marketing, publishing workflows, outside vendors, and even enforcement tools are the gray zones where AI can creep in, get misused, or just look guilty even when it’s not.
That’s why the hobby detective work isn’t going anywhere. Tighter contest rules, promo art getting screenshot-and-zoomed, WarCom copy that suddenly feels off, and the Displate Fulgrim blowup are exactly the kinds of flashpoints that keep this whole argument rolling.
Bottom line: GW didn’t end the debate. They just drew their line in the sand and basically highlighted where the next round of drama is most likely to kick off.
Games Workshop AI Warhammer Art, The Red Gobbo Goggles Fiasco
Let’s talk about Warhammer’s new green holiday mascot for 2025. In all the previous Red Gobbo miniatures and art, he wears a single pair of goggles as part of his outfit. Pretty normal, right?
The problem is, this new promo art for the 2025 Grotmas calendar features the same pair of goggles, with a second pair sitting right on top.
Now ask yourself, would a human artist draw that? Would an illustrator intentionally stack identical goggles onto a model that already has them?
Previous Red Gobbo Style of Art from GW
We don’t think so, and generally, this is the kind of mistake we all see when a machine tries to invent something and ends up creating two left hands or another new anatomical nightmare.
We fixed the double googles in Photoshop in minutes. A mix of tools, including AI, smoothed it out without any sweat. Here at Spikey Bits, we don’t have an art budget or department, and we still patched it up in a few minutes.
If we can do that, then what is going on at GW headquarters now? Do they have anyone checking this stuff anymore?
Even their Free Grotmas decorations, which they put out a day later, were drawn in a completely different style with, you guessed it, only one set of goggles.
Games Workshop’s AI Slips Are Adding Up
Games Workshop seems to have been flirting with AI for a hot minute. White Dwarf has been operating without an editor since Lyle Lowery was let go, and that gap has been very noticeable.
The writing tone across various GW outlets has also started leaning into the familiar quirks of machine-generated text, with stacks of em dashes and strange phrasing showing up everywhere.
Warhammer Community posts have raised eyebrows for the same reason. Odd sentence flow, no oversight, and that uncanny stiffness that has made some hobbyists glance at the screen like it just used the wrong fork at dinner.
Recent Warhammer Lore articles showed similar patterns, and we covered those signals before. Large chunks of text felt automated, like someone fed a prompt into a machine, slapped the results online, then sprinted out of the office to beat traffic.
So if writing is being cranked out by something without a pulse, why not the art, too? From a corporate standpoint, that jump is not shocking. The surprise is just how obvious it turned out to be.
Maybe Games Workshop doesn’t even have an art team left, either. At this rate, who knows?
Is It Hypocritical for GW to ban AI When They Use it themselves?
Games Workshop now also bans AI-assisted entries in Golden Demon. Their competition rules take a very hard line on that. So the question becomes pretty spicy.
If hobbyists cannot use AI backgrounds or touches on their models, but GW can use AI for their promotional art, their lore, their site posts, mass IP takedowns, and potentially even parts of their codex production, that is kind of a wild place to be, we think.
Where AI Is Pushing the Warhammer Hobby Next
AI is already analyzing units, spitting out optimized Warhammer 40k army lists, offering matchup plans, and giving step-by-step strategies for players who want an edge. The tech only gets better from here.
Tournament organizers might eventually need to figure out where they stand on AI list-building tools. If those tools reach a point where they generate perfect lists, that changes how the competitive scene works.
Players are already using AI to theorycraft and study matchups. The snowball is rolling.
Final Thoughts: Games Workshop’s Use of AI
Right now, GW seems caught between old habits and new AI tools they have not fully mastered. If they are going to use AI for in-house content, they may need a bit more human oversight so the Red Gobbo does not randomly grow extra gear again.
Perhaps even editors who can tell the difference between natural writing and the stiff robotic voice creeping into official posts.
The hobby is changing. AI is becoming part of the Warhammer ecosystem, whether hobbyists like it or not. We just hope GW figures this out, because fans notice, and the goggle-stacking Gobbo proves it in the funniest way possible.
Either way, if this is the future, at least we are getting some memes out of it.
See the Latest Grotmas Calendar Reveal
Feature image from Sister of Order video.
