David Revoy Prohibits AI Derivatives, Keeps His Art Open for Human Creators

Artist David Revoy has prohibited AI-generated derivations of his work in a license update published 8 October 2026.

The update appeared as article 1178 on davidrevoy.com under the title 'License update: AI derivation prohibited on all my art, lore, stories and comics'. It covers stories, lore, fan-fiction, scripts, images, renderings and comics. Revoy license update

Revoy defines the ban as derivatives where AI was used to generate or substantially replace ideas, creative process, or visual rendering. That covers generation and substantial replacement, not incidental tooling. Human-made remixes stay allowed.

That open setup has run for more than a decade. Pepper&Carrot is under CC BY, which allows reuse with credit, and MiniFantasyTheater is under CC BY-SA, which requires remixes to stay under the same terms. Each artwork and article carries its own license in its footer, and he keeps a License F.A.Q. for reuse questions.

The trigger was volume. Revoy said he receives more than three emails per day seeking permission for AI derivations. He called the ban a complement to an existing 'NO AI' contribution policy on all Pepper&Carrot repositories since March 2026. That rule governs inbound contributions. The new statement governs outbound derivatives.

The broader context here is friction between open licenses written for human reuse and generative systems that can ingest and emit at scale. CC BY and CC BY-SA were designed to widen reuse with credit and keep remixes open. They did not anticipate a queue dominated by machine synthesis. The AI carve-out tries to restore author control without closing the commons to people.

In my view, enforcement will be harder than drafting. Scope can be declared. Detection takes work. Telling AI generation apart from human work aided by autocomplete, upscaling or procedural brushes will need judgment. The practical questions are provenance tracking, disclosure, and how hosts read a custom rule over standard licenses.

Looking at what this means for open art, Revoy's approach offers a template worth watching. It keeps the commons open for people while refusing a use he sees as extractive. Whether others add similar rules or press license stewards to act, pressure is now to define authorship. That clarity helps everyone building tools and communities.