I Just Wanted a Local Ren Faire to Stop Using AI and the Founder Demanded I Create Marketing Materials for Them to Prove I Can Do It Better

 

Note on Updates: This post concerns events that are currently transpiring at time of writing. Updates and developments will be included as needed.

Note on Sources: All of the information presented in this post was sourced by myself with consultation with close friends and artists who are affected by the use of AI. Discussions of legality and slander were sourced as clarifying answers and legal information and not as legal advice from counsel. A full collection of screenshots illustrating the various posts and comments has been included here via Drive. All names used are from public posts on Facebook that were quoted by the Festival as part of their response to these inquiries. 

I will not bury the lede: the local ren faire based in Mount Pearl (known as “Mount Pearl Renaissance Festival” in their branding, “Renaissance Festival NL” and “NLRenaissanceFestival” on social media, and for the purposes of this essay, “the Festival”) has repeatedly used Generative AI images as part of their promotional material for their 2025 festival and now their upcoming 2026 festival. Not only that, they have responded to criticism from the community at large with implied threats of legal action for “slander” which they defined as “a form of defamation consisting of false, spoken statements or gestures that damage a person’s or business’s reputation, communicated to at least one third party.”

I do not take accusations like this lightly as I expect they would as well. I initially thought this entire situation would remain within comments sections of facebook posts. As the festival has decided to threaten myself and others with legal action for allegedly slandering the festival, I have decided to fully explain my case, their responses, and avoid what they describe as my looking like I “only want to tell one side of the story to make us [the Festival] look bad.”

I am going to go through the timeline of events, explain why I accused them of using Generative AI, discuss their response to the entire situation, and I will conclude by calling for them to stop using Generative AI, apologize for their actions, and for our community as a whole to work to defend artists from having work stolen from them both in the training and the application of Generative AI by companies like the Festival. 

I and others have been accused of slander for pointing out the use of Generative AI by the Festival. Although these accusations are through civic law, we can extrapolate from the Criminal Code of Canada’s sections on printed libel (concerning newspapers), in particular 281 (1) which defines such libel as being published “without lawful justification or excuse.” In other words, while the accusations of using Generative AI do carry negative connotations (to be discussed later), they are only slander and thus defamatory if they are made in falsehood or without a lawful justification. The Festival used Generative AI, and it is not slanderous to tell the truth, no matter how uncomfortable. 

Timeline of Events

July 25, 2025 - The Festival’s Instagram page posted an AI generated image promoting “The Queen’s Tea,” a tea party for all ages. The post was publicly criticized on Instagram for using AI, however it was not taken down and the Festival did not respond to any comments. Presumably, a similar post was made on Facebook that was eventually taken down at an unclear date. The same day, I personally reached out to the Festival in a private message to express my disappointment and for them to avoid AI in the future. At time of writing, they have not responded or opened the message. 

August 5, 2025 - The Festival posts an image promoting “The Princess and the Ogre Quest,” an interactive special event. This was criticized for allegedly using AI, however the Festival publically denied this was the case. I do not believe this image is provably AI and is more likely a photoshop including photos of the Festival’s committee members and either a cosplay or realistic rendering of Bolvar Fordragon from the World of Warcraft franchise to represent the “ogre” to be encountered during the event. This post has remained both on facebook and instagram at time of writing. 

Fall 2025-Winter 2026 - At some point between the 2025 festival and the past week, comments on the Festival’s instagram post were limited, effectively preventing any direct communication with the Festival via instagram. Reposts and sharing to Stories are still permitted at time of writing. 

April 15, 2026 - At 8:38 am, the Festival made a promotional post on Facebook for the upcoming “Merlin’s Magical Hammer Challenge,” a recurring event where contestants attempt to hold a hammer in one hand as long as they can. Along with photos of previous contestants, the post featured an AI image with a hammer, filigree border, and gothic text with the event’s name. An identical post was made on Instagram at some time during the same day. 

I criticized publically via an instagram story. At time of writing, there is no evidence the Festival’s account saw my story, nor that anyone commented on the Facebook post alluding to the AI. Any further critiques made directly to the Festival via direct message or public stories in response to this are not known to me. 

April 16th, 2026 - At 7:59 am, the Festival posted an official statement on Facebook alluding to the critique: 

“As a public notice Renaissance Festival NL does not use or support Al, we use local artists and local printers to create our advertising for online and physical signage.” 

An identical post with an added image of the Festival’s official logo was posted at 8:38 am on facebook and at some point during the same day on instagram. Only the initial post without the image received engagement, generally positive, from the community at large in the first few hours after posting. 

In the afternoon, I responded directly to the Festival via the comments on this post, included screenshots of both the Queen’s Tea image and the Merlin’s Magical Hammer image, and told the Festival that it is a lie to say they do not use or support AI as they have done so in the past and (at time of writing) have never rectified beyond deleting the image. Additionally, I made several stories on instagram discussing the situation, including an in-depth exploration as to why I believed the Merlin’s Magical Hammer image was Generative AI and not digital art (to be discussed later on). Critically, I also compared the statement that the Festival did not use AI to their continued use of AI and did make a call to boycott the Festival. While boycotting is a legitimate political action, its intention is the reduction of profits for the Festival, which conceivably could be construed as “damages” in a legal case which hinges on my accusations being slander and not legally justified. 

That evening, Christina Acton also commented and criticized the Festival and pointed out how the “local artists” supposedly used by the Festival were never credited, as well as how suspicious it was to limit comments on Instagram. 

 

April 17th, 2026 - At 10:44 am, the Festival began to reply to myself and Christina directly. As a note, these replies are not only copied and pasted to multiple comments, they are occasionally contradictory and unclear in their meaning. It is unclear whether one person or multiple with access to the Festival’s facebook account responded, so I will be treating all responses as the responses of the Festival in general given their usage of their public account in responding to the allegations. 

First, at 10:44 am, Christina received this reply from the Festival. In my opinion, it potentially includes copied and pasted text from whoever created the images, however it is unclear whether they were responding directly or on their behalf:

“This is from the person who does our artwork and hosts our website

I gotta say this... because people are getting confused.

Not EVERYTHING we see is AI generated. There is such a thing as CGI and a lot of artists use computer programs to create and edit artwork, create logos, design brands, and do a lot more.

So before jumping into the ring and shouting "Thats [sic] AI and you are a pig for using it", remember that CGI and computer graphics programs existed LOOOOOONG [sic] before AI slop.”

At 10:45 am, Veronica Marie, a commenter who replied to myself and Christina’s comments, also received this exact response from the Festival to a comment agreeing with Christina and also alleging the use of AI in the Merlin’s Magical Hammer posts. At 10:47 am, I received the same response on my comment from the 16th. I believe that due to my inclusion of the Queen’s Tea Party image in my comment, this reply was defending that image as a kind of 3D artwork like that produced on Blender, a software program used by 3D animators and artists. 

At 10:51 am, the Festival responded to my comment again, this time accusing me directly of slander: 

“We do not use any AI, we use a person from corner Brook [sic] who does our artwork for online and physical advertising.

You might want to reconsider calling someone a lier [sic] online as you could be opening yourself up to legal action for [sic]

In Canada, slander is a form of defamation consisting of false, spoken statements or gestures that damage a person’s [sic] or business’s reputation, communicated to at least one third party.”

At 10:55 am, the Festival responds in a similar way to Christina: 

“As I have stated we do not use AI, and what you are saying is a form of slander and you can certainly open yourself up for legal action against you.

As In Canada, slander is a form of defamation consisting of false, spoken statements or gestures that damage a person’s or business’s reputation, communicated to at least one third party. Be careful what you say online.”

Next, at 11:07 am, the Festival responded to my comment (specifically the secondary comment I made highlighting the Queen’s Tea image) but notably contradicted the previous responses denying that AI was ever used:

“if you are going to make a post then please make the reply from us so it doesn’t make you look like you only want to tell one side of the story to make us look bad. This queens tea picture was done by another company we hired and as I am new to AI and didn’t know anything about how it works and because I don’t live online as others do, once we were notified by the public that it was AI it was instantly taken down and replaced with the following Queen’s tea picture. And an apology was made online that we didn’t realize it was AI and that we were sorry it was used.

So please tell the entire story,And [sic] you might want to watch what you accuse someone or a business of online as it can be viewed as slander and open yourself up to legal action against you.

In Canada, slander is a form of defamation consisting of false, spoken statements or gestures that damage a person’s [sic] or business’s reputation, communicated to at least one third party”

At 3:28 PM, during the writing of this post, I and other commenters asking for the name of the artist of the Queen’s Tea received responses from Jeff Keeping, who stated he is not currently affiliated with the Festival (though he was later named and discussed by the Festival shortly), where he claimed to be responsible for using AI to generate the image for the Queen’s Tea. This was his specific reply to me:

“yeah I'm going to jump in here now.

Yup, this was AI. Sure was. Not denying it. Why? Because I am the one who used it. Kind of hard to find a specific reference photo for "Queen's Tea Party at a Renaissance Festival".... go ahead, try it... see what you can find.

It looked like crap. I hated it.

We were called out on it and it was IMMEDIATELY deleted, apologies were made and it was replaced with an ACTUAL photograph of the young lady [Note: as far as I know, the performer being referred to here uses they/them pronouns] who hosted the Tea Party.

Since that incident, the Ren Fest has not used ANY AI imagery (that I am aware of) and I can say that as I do roughly 90% of the layouts and design work for the festival.

So go ahead, take a giant shit on me if it makes you feel better. I made a mistake, took responsibility for it - short of flagellation - but, sure, feel free to continue bringing it up.”

Although there may be other replies and comments made following today, I want to conclude the timeline with a final response from both the Festival and a member of the Festival’s Committee: Darren Hann, Co-Founder and Chair of Sci-Fi on the Rock. At 3:37 pm and 4:02 pm, Darren Hann posted the same reply both through the official Festival account and through his personal Facebook to myself and others, referencing Keeping’s initial admittance to using AI for the Festival:

“Jeff Keeping. thank you I didn’t want to publicly post your name as the artist without your permission but it seems a lot of these folks don’t care about privacy or how a business works and I am just supposed to freely post some artists name who did work for my business with out their approval just because someone online demand’s [sic] it.

As I have stated to everyone and all the know it alls on this posting , we do not use AI. If you think you can do better than the artist we use then you make the picture and if it meets with our approval then I’ll buy it from you for posting .would [sic] that make you all happy?

I will be expecting submissions from everyone that has complained and commented. Let’s see if you can make a better picture.”

At some point after 3:30 pm, the Festival removed the Instagram post of Merlin’s Magical Hammer. The Facebook post promoting the same event was still public by 5:00pm, however at some point between then and 5:50 pm it was later deleted. At some point before 6:00pm, the Queen’s Tea post was also finally deleted from Instagram. 

Finally, at some point before 6:07 pm, the Festival deleted all posts referring to AI. All record of the entire debacle rests with myself.

I will discuss these responses in detail shortly once I’ve discussed the evidence that the two images in question are AI, however I believe it would be disingenuous to not immediately highlight the contradiction of these responses. The Festival has denied using AI, yet confirmed Jeff Keeping made the images, claimed they apologized and deleted it, but also confirmed Keeping’s account of using AI for the Queen’s Tea image and never took down the image from Instagram at time of writing. Not only this, but there is no public apology on either their Instagram or their Facebook from 2025 or at time of writing. 

I will discuss their responses in greater detail later on, but now I believe I must show my evidence on the usage of Generative AI by the Festival. 

How to Spot AI

A quick disclaimer: the advice I’m going to be providing is not universal in determining whether an image is generated by AI. Rather, each test is part of a greater series of critical examinations to determine the validity of the image. Some are specific to individual AI generators like ChatGPT and depending on the “style” being sought by the AI, what may be a tell-tale sign of AI in one image is not present at all in another. In this case, one is meant to appear photorealistic while the other is significantly more stylized. That being said, there is a tendency to “know it when you see it” when it comes to AI, and given the accusation of slander being made against anyone who criticizes the Festival, I believe that explaining the flaws in the images is useful for anyone not familiar with how to identify AI imagery. 

The Queen’s Tea image is, essentially, generic of AI images that can be produced by any number of programs like Midjourney, OpenAI, Gemini, Meta AI, and the dozens of others powered by the above examples. Although more hyper-realistic image generators have been released recently, in July 2025 this was effectively the “standard” that anyone could generate if they wanted a realistic image. Across any AI image, we’re looking for anomalies that do not correlate with intent or error. If something looks off, is that a deliberate choice or an error made within the replicated medium? AI has no intent and despite the collecting of data being called “training,” they are not taught the basics of composition, shapes, colour theory, or sketching. 

In the Queen’s Tea image, the tell-tale signs we can find are related to depth-of-field, the uncanny valley, and impossible graphics. First, AI images that are generated to appear realistic have extreme depth-of-field, where the subject in the foreground remains in focus while nearly everything else is blurred. Whether this is a deliberate programming choice to make it harder to detect is unclear. This, along with soft lighting, attempts to disguise the overall “plastic” look of AI images with justifications for their look. However, these tricks do not work when you look for anomalous details. As soon as you zoom into the face of the Queen, her features are immediately striking as uncanny and inhuman. Too realistic to be a 3d model, too distorted to be a real human. If the image is photoshopped, why make her look like this? The distortion on her face is not connected to the surroundings like you would see in a distortion of the entire image like in photoshop, so it is neither an error nor a deliberate choice. This is an impossible graphic, which is exactly what proves it is AI aside from Keeping’s admittance.

The more difficult image is the Merlin’s Magical Hammer graphic. Again, this image is “obvious” to anyone who has spent considerable time debunking the onslaught of AI images that have proliferated in the past 4 years, specifically as being generated by ChatGPT which often generates images with a brown filter, thick linework, and fuzz from image compression. But, if I am to be accused of slander, then the proof must be shown. As with the Queen’s Tea image, parsing anomalies for intent and error is key to finding signs of AI. Many images are coloured in earth tones, many use thick linework, and many images are generally fuzzy from being saved repeatedly, further compressing the file. Please note the below examples are composites of isolated details of the image.

First, let’s compare the font. Although some graphic designers do hand-lettering, the intended style of the image is digital art, making a font more likely to be used. Because fonts are text files, each letter should be identical to each other instance of itself, such as the dot over each “i” which do not match in this image. The lack of rough strokes or lines from hand-lettering are not present, making the errors not plausible or part of a deliberate design choice. 

Second, the hammer itself. The lighting is inconsistent and appears to be on multiple sides of the object. However, many artists struggle with consistent lighting, so we cannot reliably use the multiple highlights as proof. We can however use the grey blobs. If you were to draw a hammer, would you add random splotches to the top of the hammer or would you add one singular blob to match the handle below? Even if the splotch wasn’t perfect, you would only attempt one. The splotches, along with the sharp angles on the handle, show errors that aren’t common in illustration but are seen in image generation. 

Finally, the filigree border is a complete mess. While it would be simpler to draw one side then flip it, let’s assume that if this was a drawing, each side was done individually, and therefore imperfect symmetry would not prove it to be AI. When you compare the top and bottom, the differences are greater than errors but bizarre as intentional choices. Would an artist randomly choose to make some sections of the top filigree connect where on the bottom filigree they remain separate? Would an artist randomly change the colouring of one part with no clear indication as to why? These are neither clear choices nor errors in drawing the details. They are deviations from the generation of the image by Chat GPT. 

The sum of this evidence clearly indicates this image was neither drawn with the mistakes of an artist nor the intentions of one. It was generated by AI, with all the hallmarks of Chat GPT image generation. 

These two images are AI, but despite this being seen by so many, the response to these accusations has become an issue of itself. 

I Just Wanted a Local Ren Faire to Stop Using AI and Now a Founder and Convention Chair is Aggressively Demanding I Create Marketing Materials to Prove I Can Do It Better

When I first received replies from the Festival, I was bewildered, frustrated, and above all else, deeply disappointed. I thought they would be better. I thought they would at least admit to what they had done and try to move on in a productive fashion. Instead, over the course of the entire day, they have somehow escalated from threatening me with defamation lawsuits to aggressively demanding that I and everyone else who questioned them for using AI make our own promotional images for them to use. The irony of someone accused of using AI demanding content from an audience appears to be lost.

Darren Hann (through his personal and Festival account) has replied in this way to virtually everyone on the original post, demanding labour of us who merely ask for them to be transparent with their marketing. Not only this, but following his comments, he engaged in aggressive and deeply unprofessional messages with commenter Oceann KS among others who have given me permission to share the exchange between the Festival’s account and them. 

AI is a blight. It is programmed with stolen data made by real artists who would have jumped at the chance to make promotional material for the Festival, operates from data centres that pollute and contaminate the surrounding environment while consuming gallons of freshwater, and is eroding the foundational principles of truth and fact with its widespread proliferation of misinformation and fraud. 

For these reasons, I wanted the Festival to stop using it. I wanted this event so predicated on artists and creators to stop using a plagiarising slop machine and to engage in the rich art community of our province. At the most, I wanted some of the community to discuss a potential boycott only until the situation was alleviated by the Festival apologizing for using AI, ceasing all usage of it, and to do what they could to repair trust with the community.

Darren Hann has proven this is not enough. His conduct on behalf of the Festival is deeply unprofessional, antagonistic, and borderline aggressive. The continued denial of using AI despite confirming that Jeff Keeping did in fact generate the artwork, the deeply insensitive remarks made towards commenters including threats of legal action, and the deeply unprofessional conduct made in private messages on behalf of the Festival all contribute to a deeply disturbing pattern of behaviour condoned by the Festival as a whole. 

Throughout the replies, Hann and the Festival repeatedly lied again and again. The Festival used AI in marketing. The Festival continued to use AI in marketing. The Festival only deleted all of the AI images on the 16th of April, hours after they claimed they had already done so and the other images were not AI. The Festival still has no public apology disclosing the use of AI and the only disclosure that they ever did use AI are within vindictive comments made by Hann. 

And now, as I desperately try to compose this as the Festival erratically deletes all evidence of their conduct, I am just exhausted by the complete disregard for decency employed by the Festival. 

Given the repeated usage of Generative AI in marketing materials, the deeply unprofessional conduct in the public forum, and the clear indication that our voices are not enough to make the truth heard, but our wallets may yet be: I am calling for a boycott of the Mount Pearl Renaissance Festival from August 22nd and 23rd. Do not purchase tickets at the gate when August arrives. If you are a vendor, artist, or special guest, withdraw your application and otherwise cancel your arrangement to attend the festival. Until the Festival recognizes the consequences of deeply unprofessional conduct towards potential participants, it will not change. 

Additionally, I am calling on everyone who reads this to share it so that this behaviour does not go unnoticed. However, I must add that sharing this and applying pressure in a non-aggressive manner is imperative. I fundamentally do not condone and in fact condemn any and all harassment of the individuals associated with the Festival and Sci-Fi on the Rock, including Hann. Furthermore, I am not calling for a boycott of Sci-Fi on the Rock despite Hann being the current Chair. His conduct on behalf of the Festival is more emblematic of issues with how the Festival is run than Sci-Fi on the Rock. 

I just wanted the Festival to stop using AI. And over the course of nearly a day the Festival has proven itself so deeply unprofessional that I feel profound regret for every person who was addressed so poorly by Hann and the Festival. To everyone on the original post who has received deplorable comments and private messages as a result of your inquiry, I am sorry.

Update: At 12:02 am on April 19th, 2026. Darren Hann privately messaged me and others what would become the official statement by the Festival's facebook page. This was less than 12 hours after I was blocked by the page and comments were shut off temporarily for asking if they would release a statement.