An Update on Harry Potter and the Order of AI-Gate

After a week of back-and-forth conversation and debate on the matter, yesterday we received an official update to the Harry Potter pinball AI art scandal (aka Harry Potter and the Order of AI-Gate).

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Jesper Abels, who was behind the playfield art package on all versions of the game, as well as the cabinet art for the Wizard and Arcade editions, posted the following statement to the original Tilt Forums thread, where he confirmed the use of AI tools in the creative process and cleared Jersey Jack leadership of prior knowledge of any wrongdoing. It's worth noting that before publishing this statement I had attempted a few more times to talk directly with Jesper with no response provided. Here's the full statement:

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Hi everyone,

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As one of the artists behind the new Harry Potter pinball machine from Jersey Jack Pinball, I’d like to take a moment to openly address the recent conversations surrounding the artwork particularly around the use of AI and to share some insight into the process, the intentions, and the creative decisions that were made along the way.

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AI tools were never used to generate full illustrations or replace the hand-crafted work, but rather as part of a much larger creative process that also included hand-drawing, painting, digital composition, and licensed assets.

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I made the creative decision to pursue complexity over simplicity in the visual design. That was my call, and I stand by it. The reason is simple we wanted to deliver something that hadn’t been done before. Something that brought unique, dynamic poses and compositions to life scenes that represent not only moments from the films, but the emotional and narrative core of the entire Harry Potter story.

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Our goal wasn’t to replicate what’s already out there. We wanted to give fans something completely new, something immersive and visually rich, where the art serves the gameplay and storytelling at every level. We believed that taking this risk would result in a more rewarding experience for the player.

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To be transparent, we did use AI tools sparingly and intentionally, as a way to support the visual blending of certain elements and create harmony between complex assets. Every instance of AI use was guided by my own artistic vision and layered onto hand-crafted designs. It was never about replacing the human element it was about enhancing it.

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That said, not everyone involved in the project had direct knowledge or understanding of these technologies. The leadership team at Jersey Jack Pinball was not involved in the technical art pipeline, and understandably, they were not in a position to explain or defend those tools, as they were unfamiliar with the specifics of how they were applied. The creative team took on that responsibility, always with the intent of delivering the best product possible.

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What the audience sees is the final product. But what you don’t see is the countless revisions, challenges, feedback loops, technical restrictions, and approvals that went into making it all come together. It’s honestly a wonder that we were able to create something this complex and detailed, and I’m incredibly proud of what we achieved as a team.

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The people at Jersey Jack Pinball gave everything to this project. This wasn’t just a job it was a passion project fueled by a deep respect for both the Harry Potter universe and the game of pinball itself. We did everything we could to bring something magical and memorable into the world.

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At the end of the day, this machine was made for you the players, the collectors, the fans. We know there will be feedback, and we welcome it, because it means you care. We’ll keep learning, keep pushing, and keep creating.

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Thank you for your passion for pinball.

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Jesper

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There's a lot to unpack with this statement, and I think it mostly serves to raise more questions than it answers, but there are a few specific threads I wanted to pull on.

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Jesper's Use of AI Tools

"To be transparent, we did use AI tools sparingly and intentionally, as a way to support the visual blending of certain elements and create harmony between complex assets." - Jesper Abels

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After additional research, this more or less lines up with my understanding of what likely happened behind the scenes. In an update shared to Jesper's Bluesky account back in March, he posted a screenshot of a heartfelt rant about the challenges of being a visual artist in this moment. While he doesn't mention AI specifically, he speaks to the pain it causes, namely the cheap commodification of his work by corporate technology giants and subsequent erosion in the perceived and likely monetary value of his life's work.

"I think art is about proposing something that makes you feel something meaningful. And as innocent as that meaningful feeling may be, hopefully, it is an addition to your experience of life. It makes you arrive in this clear-headed state where you can reflect on things that you've been going through, you can process them, you can address them, and then you can move on and hopefully be a better person... This is a cry for help. From a digital visual artist that tries to make honest art and is just at a loss for what to do."

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Do these sound like words from an artist that's cavalierly using outputs from a service like ChatGPT in order to pull a fast one on a high profile client project? Hard for me to believe.

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I feel this pain even in my own work; more with each passing day.

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To illustrate the point, I was having a conversation with a friend in the media space recently about a divisive pinball personality. My friend wound up sending me some ChatGPT outputs about this person, surprised at its overall accuracy. The implication seemed to be, "wow, ChatGPT is really smart and insightful, look what it knows". To which I replied, "well yeah, because these are basically words I wrote myself on my website."

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There's a project in Jesper's Behance portfolio, called Solar Script, that I think is pretty close to the process he likely used with Harry Potter.

It was published in 2021, so well before the current generative AI boom. In it, he starts with a base of still photography and then builds on top of that through a compositing process, adding additional colors and visual elements until the photo is transformed into something new. Some of these outputs have echoes of some of the artifacts we've seen recently with Harry Potter.

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So AI Was Used; Did Jack Lie?

That said, not everyone involved in the project had direct knowledge or understanding of these technologies. The leadership team at Jersey Jack Pinball was not involved in the technical art pipeline, and understandably, they were not in a position to explain or defend those tools, as they were unfamiliar with the specifics of how they were applied. - Jesper Abels

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This leads into the next major question. In our first update on the Harry Potter AI controversy, we published direct comments from JJP founder Jack Guarnieri where he stated very directly that "AI was not used. No corners were cut, no expense was spared."

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A lot of people interpreted that as an intentionally deceptive act, but I do think the truth is closer to Jesper's explanation of things, and is why Jack would so confidently deny the original question.

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I followed-up with Jack following Jesper's statement, and asked him if he wanted to provide any follow-up to his statements from last week.

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"To me, being accused of 'Using AI' means that someone told ChatGPT 'Create artwork for a Pinball machine, cabinet and playfield'. That didn't happen, so my reply to you was we didn't use AI. But it seems that AI is in everything - I thought about other software used to create games. Almost all pinball designers, mechanical / electrical engineers use the SolidWorks program [which uses AI]".

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It's fair that someone with a professional background steeped in the comparatively low-tech field of coin-op entertainment might not have a nuanced understanding of what "using AI" means.

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But it does speak to a less-than-ideal creative QA process, if key members of the management team were not aware of the tactical details of how the technical art pipeline was managed and delivered, enough so to leverage the game's supposed hand-drawn artwork package as a talking point in launch marketing materials.

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I pressed on this point a little. Even if you take AI out of the equation, it still looks like things were missed in QA. How did this happen?

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"Seems it was overlooked by everyone. It's funny but those games may end up being more valuable as they are rare."

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So no, I don't think Jack Guarnieri lied here. Perhaps misinformed.

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What Happens Next?

Throughout my dialogue with Jack, it was pretty obvious he kept wanting to redirect me to the merits of the game outside of its questionable creative production practices.

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"Have you played the game?"

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"Did you see it won game of the year at SFGE?"

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"Everybody just wants the game. Once they get it, they love it. They laugh about it and they think it's something special."

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What I found most enlightening is at one point in this exchange, he more or less said that the AI issue isn't important to JJP's customers. That they just want to get their game and play it. That's a sentiment I've seen echoed in various enthusiast discussions, so tracks with my understanding of JJP's core buyer.

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But I still wanted to know, hypothetically, if it was an important issue to a customer who has already purchased a game, would he offer any sort of replacement or fix?

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He sidestepped the question. "This may not answer your question directly but nobody has refused the game."

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Combined with his comment about the AI-art versions of the game maybe becoming more valuable due to rarity, it sounds like they may be making some changes to the artwork moving forward, but may not want to take on the cost and responsibility that would be associated with issuing a more definitive public statement and plan of action.

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I wanted to go a bit deeper with him, and touch on some of the meta-contextual discussions of generative AI in pinball, and people's understandable anxieties around this and future releases. I wanted to know if this experience taught the JJP team any lessons, and how they might change their approach moving forward.

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I wanted to know how JJP (and the pinball industry) could adapt their approach to using AI enabled tools in creative work so that the authenticity of the human touch behind these games is preserved and so that errors introduced by working with new tools are caught and corrected earlier in the process.

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"Colin, we will continue to adapt to the changing technology as well as adopting best practices. Nothing can replace human creativity."

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He then proceeded to copy/paste a response from ChatGPT to my question, "I asked ChatGPT to answer your questions and here's what AI says...".

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I laughed. At this point he's clearly fucking with me. I don't mind. It speaks to some of the humor Jack has always had in his interactions with the pinball community. I also thought it spoke to the spirit of the situation and why this particular issue is so animating for a segment of the pinball community.

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AI will never be able to replicate Jack Guarnieri, his lived experiences, or his expertise. At best it can provide a cheap, hollow mimic. The nuance. The perspective. The humanity. That's what people want to hear from, connect with, and understand.

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It's the same with the artwork. Once you remove the human component, what even is the point of all this? What are people still connecting with?

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It's a slippery slope, and one I'm definitely worried about.