Moleskine's AI Lord of the Rings collection can only mock

Home » Travel » moleskine’s ai lord of the rings collection can only mock Travelmoleskine’s ai lord of the rings collection can only mock First posted April 16, 2026 /Moleskine, the notebook company, today announced their new The Lord of the Rings collection. Posts on their website and social media show a set of notebooks and planners, along with merchandise (pins, patches, stickers and postcards) with colourful Lord of the Rings artwork. The problem? A small disclaimer on some of the images reads, “Imagined by Moleskine, generated by AI.”I have used Moleskine notebooks for years, since the days when the brand claimed that their legendary notebooks were once used by luminaries such as Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso. Nowadays, they have tempered their statement to only acknowledge the claim without committing to it, a marketing strategy that they appear to continue using in the current AI controversy.“The Moleskine notebook is the heir and successor to the legendary notebook used by artists and thinkers over the past two centuries: among them Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway and Bruce Chatwin.” —”Our Heritage: The Legendary Notebook” on Moleskine’s websiteStill, the word “legendary” appears on their website in abundance: from “legendary deals” to “legendary collection.”I am also a big Lord of the Rings fan, so this collection immediately caught my eye. This morning, I saved the post on Instagram to make sure to take a look when I got home. But when I finally had the chance to browse the collection on the Moleskine website, something held me back from placing an order. It was hard to put my finger on it at first, but then, in the corner of a promotional image on the website, I saw the AI disclaimer.By this time, Moleskine’s Instagram post announcing the Lord of the Rings collection had several comments calling out Moleskine for the AI use, to which Moleskine have not responded. In fact, none of the eight pictures in Moleskine’s Instagram announcement post, on 15 April 2026, had any mention of AI whatsoever.advertisement (adsbygoogle=window.adsbygoogle||[]).push({}) There are no details about which parts of the product are AI, or how AI was used. There aren’t even any clues that one could have picked out in the earlier days of AI. And this is a legitimate collaboration, with The Lord of the Rings logo and trademark stamped on the products.The art in Moleskine’s The Lord of the Rings collection has a flat, minimalist style that doesn’t have noisy pixels or anatomical anomalies. The designs of Helm’s Deep and Gondor are generic and lack details. Everything in the cover images is done in block colours and silhouettes. On one hand, this is a solid strategy to hide that a piece of artwork was AI-generated. On the other, there are artists out there who do use this sort of style in their legitimate, human-made artwork.And that’s the problem: we cannot tell the difference. Without the “generated by AI” note, there might be no way to tell if the art in Moleskine’s notebook collection is AI. As of writing, Moleskine have not admitted to using AI in these cover designs, but they also have not credited an artist or provided any proof of human creation. Given that previous limited-edition collections have often been collaborations with artists and designers that Moleskine have proudly featured front and centre in their promotional material, this is troubling.Moleskine’s “3 Artists, 3 Countries” collection in 2024 featured designs…

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