Moleskine, the notebook company that built its identity on celebrating human creativity, released a Lord of the Rings collection this month with AI-generated artwork and barely any disclosure. The collection includes notebooks, planners, pins, and stickers featuring minimalist designs of locations like Helm's Deep and Gondor. A small disclaimer reading "Imagined by Moleskine, generated by AI" appeared on some promotional images, but not on individual product pages where customers actually make purchasing decisions. None of Moleskine's eight Instagram posts announcing the collection mentioned AI at all.
Then came the maps.
An Instagram post featured a map in Tolkien's iconic style with location names like "Der Rarmorth" and "Narmimtz," names that don't exist in any version of Middle-earth. Blogger Cheryl-Jean Leo documented the errors in her analysis, noting that someone with even tangential knowledge of Lord of the Rings should have caught them. Another map on the Moleskine website showed similar gibberish place names, and the disclaimers were applied inconsistently between the two images.
Moleskine's response made things murkier. After public pressure, the company claimed the notebook covers were created by human designers, with AI used only for promotional image backgrounds. They didn't credit any specific artists, a departure from previous limited-edition collections that prominently featured collaborators like Zeng Fanzhi and Momoko Sakura. Then Moleskine removed the AI disclaimer from their website entirely. The flat, generic art style of the covers makes it difficult to determine whether AI was involved in the final products.
Middle-earth Enterprises, the Embracer Group subsidiary that holds the Lord of the Rings licensing rights, includes quality control clauses in standard agreements requiring final approval on all artwork and product designs. Hallucinated location names making it through to public campaigns means oversight failed or existing contracts don't specifically address AI-generated content. Either way, the licensor has a problem. And Moleskine, a brand that sells notebooks to artists, just showed those artists exactly how little it values their work.