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AI-Generated Content

Panels Store does not allow AI-generated comics. This page explains what that means, why we have this policy, and where the line is.

Our Position​

Comics are made by people. Writers craft stories, artists create images, and letterers give voice to characters — each making thousands of small creative decisions that add up to something a reader connects with. That process, and the humans behind it, is what Panels Store exists to support.

Generative AI tools can produce images and text, but they do so by pattern-matching on work created by others, without creative intent or authorship. Allowing AI-generated comics on Panels Store would undermine the creators we're here for and erode the quality and trust readers expect from our catalog.

Our catalog is reserved for work made by human creators.

What Is Not Allowed​

AI-generated artwork​

Pages or panels produced by generative AI systems — including but not limited to Midjourney, DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, Sora, Adobe Firefly, and similar text-to-image, image-to-image, or text-to-video tools — are not allowed, whether used whole or as the primary visual basis for your pages.

This applies regardless of how much post-processing was applied after the AI output. If an AI generated the image and a human refined it, the result is still AI-generated artwork.

AI-generated narrative​

Scripts, dialogue, captions, or story content produced by large language models or similar systems (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc.) are not allowed, whether used verbatim or as the primary basis for your story.

Writing prompts, research, and light editing assistance are fine. Having an AI write your script is not.

End-to-end AI comic tools​

Tools that take a text prompt and return a finished comic — panels, dialogue, and all — are not allowed under any circumstances.

What Is Allowed​

Human creators using AI as a production aid is fine. The distinction is between a tool that assists your creative work and a tool that replaces it.

Allowed uses include:

  • Color flatting and color correction — using AI to handle repetitive coloring tasks while you direct the palette and style
  • Lettering assistance — AI-assisted font selection, balloon placement suggestions, or automated text fitting
  • Image cleanup and upscaling — denoising, sharpening, or resolution enhancement of artwork you drew
  • Reference generation — generating reference images to draw from, not to publish directly
  • Research and writing assistance — fact-checking, grammar, structure feedback on drafts you wrote
  • Translation support — for localized editions
  • Accessibility features — alt text generation, audio descriptions

The test is not "did you use an AI tool at any point" — it is "did an AI generate the comic, or did you?"

Why This Matters to Us​

We are aware that the line can feel arbitrary in some cases, and that AI tools are becoming more deeply integrated into creative software. We're not trying to police every pixel. We're trying to ensure that the comics in our catalog represent the work of human creators.

There are a few reasons this policy exists:

For creators. The comics industry is built on the skill and vision of artists and writers. AI image generation in particular threatens to devalue that work commercially. We don't want Panels Store to be a platform that makes it easier to undercut human creators.

For readers. Readers come to Panels Store to discover comics made by people. They form connections with creators and want to support them. AI-generated content would mislead that relationship.

For the catalog. Generative AI tools make it trivially easy to produce large volumes of low-quality content. Without a clear policy, our catalog would quickly fill with material that has no creative value.

Disclosure and Enforcement​

When you publish on Panels Store, you confirm in good faith that your Content meets this standard. During the upload process, you agree to disclose any meaningful use of generative AI tools.

We acknowledge that enforcement depends heavily on creator honesty. We cannot automatically detect every violation, and we are not trying to penalize creators for using AI-assisted tools appropriately. But when Content is found to be primarily AI-generated, it will be removed. Repeated violations will result in account termination.

If you're uncertain whether a specific use of AI tools in your workflow complies with this policy, contact us at publish@panels.store before publishing. We'd rather answer the question in advance than remove your work after the fact.