Petrea Mitchell’s excellent SMOF News (Volume 5, Issue 23, January 28th 2026) noted that anti-AI art policies are getting harsher at conventions, with, among other actions, Comic Con International changing its policy from segregated and identified displays of AI art allowed to now banning AI art entirely.
Way back in 1936 or thereabouts, the Fannish community could arguably be divided into two groups: the amateur science crowd and the literary crowd. The literary crowd “won out” and we got the beginnings of modern day Fandom. The science kids went off and founded the Rocket Society.
In the late 1980s, Gay fans felt they weren’t getting enough or proper representation at traditional conventions, so they went off and founded Gaylaxicon. It has grown, slowly but steadily since.
In the early 70s, Star Trek fans felt they were not getting enough representation at traditional conventions and went off and did their own. Little more need be said about that phenomena.
In the early aughts, Black fans felt they were not getting enough representation and held several Black oriented conventions (SF and Comic related). They’ve been growing since.
Each time this has happened in the past, the excluded have gone off and done their own thing, achieved success and then, to varying degrees, became incorporated as a part of the traditional Fannish landscape as well.
Do you see the pattern?
I’m sure there are other examples. I don’t know if Fannish Railroading or Tea enthusiasts initially faced exclusion, and I’m sure that there are other examples in which the exclusion was justified (Scientology’s attempts for example), but there does seem to be a pattern.
Maybe it’s a pattern that we should recognize and figure out how to deal with it.
Clearly, AI art (and AI literature, and probably AI editing, and AI…) are a thing. They’re established, or at least have a beachhead. I’m sorry if this comes across as capitulation, but it’s not. It’s recognition of reality.
The question has now become, how long are we going to exclude something that is clearly of interest to a significant constituency of fans (and most, I’d venture to guess, of the young, eager, shaggy-eared variety, rather than those with graying shaggy ears), before we open the doors, as Fandom has eventually done, every time, in the past?
Otherwise, they’re going to go off and do their own thing – as they are already doing:
CI-FI: Mythologies Transformed (2024–2025)
World of AI·magination (2023–2024)
there’s more….
Our reality now is one of figuring out how to handle and channel the invasion, rather than preventing it.
Steve Davidson is the publisher of Amazing Stories.
Steve has been a passionate fan of science fiction since the mid-60s, before he even knew what it was called.
