The hobby that AI is ruining for its fans

Puzzle enthusiasts’ pleasure is measured in the smallest of details: the exact shade of pink on a peony’s petal, a small sliver of a man’s plaid shirt, the tiniest glint of sunlight reflecting off a wave’s crest. It’s in the knowledge that every piece has a proper place, and the idea that seemingly infinite chaos has a solution. Hobbyists spend hours studying a pile of disparate pieces, inspecting each one closely, sorting them accordingly, and fusing them all back together. That intense examination — of patterns, of colors, of speckles, etc. — is integral to completing this challenge, to solving this beautifully vexing enigma. It also makes the presence of AI-generated images very obvious, and very annoying. 

“Where else does a photo or painting have its details scrutinized as much as when someone is doing a puzzle?” David Swart, a jigsaw enthusiast, told Vox. “I’ve been to museums and seen famous art in Rome and New York. But only when doing a puzzle am I looking for the little branch that has a white fleck on the tip.” 

Asking a person to devote hours deciphering what a computer has created, sometimes sloppily, in seconds, feels more like a punishment than a hobby. Every detail matters in puzzles, and details are where AI often falls short. 

The difficulty for these eagle-eyed puzzlists is that they’re fighting a battle against capitalism. It’s less expensive for companies to make AI-generated puzzles because there’s no need to pay a human artist, which makes them cheaper for the general public to buy — which then incentives even more AI. 

At the heart of this backlash is also something more fundamental: Most people view puzzles as a tactile, mindful, and uniquely analog experience — a way to fully unplug from the digital world, use your brain, and be present. Puzzling is a place where you’re supposed to be able to get away from AI and everything it represents, but that’s changing rapidly.     

Why some jigsaw puzzle enthusiasts hate AI 

When it comes to traditional jigsaw puzzles, there’s a thoughtfulness to the design of both the image and the pieces themselves. Every color, curve, and knob has a purpose. In trying to create these crucial components without human ingenuity and logic, AI-generated art removes both the tension and the aha! moments that make puzzling so satisfying. 

“It’s like, wait a minute, this person has six fingers, or this plant starts off with a stem here and then it doesn’t pick up until halfway across the puzzle,” Tracy Delphia, a puzzler with more than 60 years of experience, told Vox. 

While AI-created art and puzzles can appear beautiful as a whole, there’s often a lack of coherence when it comes to the individual elements of an image.

Delphia said that she has been assembling jigsaw puzzles since she was a child, but took it up as a serious hobby about 16 months ago. In that time, Delphia said she’s encountered more and more AI-created puzzles. She even received a few as gifts. 

“I think they decided, ‘Oh wow, I can get Tracy more puzzles for the price of one by buying these other brands.’ And what I ended up with were AI images,” Delphia said.

The earliest ones were bad, she said — full of “really weird stuff” like cats with unnatural fur and humans with disjointed features. AI art is improving (though critics would say that just means it’s getting better at stealing from living artists), but there are still some telltale signs that a computer, rather than a human, created an image. 

“Imagine doing a 1,000-piece puzzle and having dozens and dozens of head-scratching moments as you scrutinize the image,” Swart said. He pointed me to a holiday train puzzle and listed out several obvious issues with it: The attic windows on the house are smushed with seemingly no beginning or end; details on the train’s engine are asymmetrical in a way that makes no logical sense; and some of the humans appear to also be snowmen. 

While AI-created art and puzzles can appear beautiful as a whole, there’s often a lack of coherence when it comes to the individual elements of an image — again, the exact elements you’re going to be focusing on as you work your way through a big pile of pieces. 

“You can tell a lot of it is not well thought out because it’s created by a machine,” Brittany Routh, a graphic designer and avid puzzler, told Vox. Routh also owns her own online puzzle shop, Every Little Piece, which has a non-AI pledge. “Usually, the composition and the basics of the artwork itself is just missing. There’ll be all of those little AI mistakes,” she added, noting that another red flag is blurriness or a drop in picture quality — the result of expanding a low-res image.

Routh views puzzles as art: It involves an exchange between the creator, who invests time in making something as a way of expressing themselves, and the observer, who invests time in understanding it and connecting with it. For Routh and other aficionados I spoke to, that exchange simply can’t happen with an AI-generated image. And if the puzzle maker isn’t being thoughtful or intentional about what they are producing, why would people who care about their hobby (and art in general) want to spend time working on it?

Many puzzlers are also put off by the fact that generative AI is trained on the work of humans who weren’t compensated and who didn’t opt in to having their work used this way. AI art “doesn’t just come out of nowhere,” Routh said. When she buys puzzles created by humans, she likes knowing that her money is directly supporting a real person.

The fight against AI in puzzling is a puzzle in itself

AI art is mostly popping up in the puzzles that are sold through big retail and e-commerce sites like Amazon. Those companies, which already had the upper hand over smaller businesses, have an even bigger advantage thanks to AI’s ability to churn out imagery at an incredible rate and with less cost. But AI is also creeping into the offerings from more reputable puzzle companies, including Cobble Hill (which, to its credit, labels puzzles that were created with “AI assistance” on its website, though not on Amazon). Puzzlers have also questioned whether Ravensburger and Buffalo Games are stocking AI puzzles. 

Vox reached out to Ravensburger and Buffalo Games about their respective policies on AI use but did not hear back from the latter.

Ravensburger sent Vox the following statement via email: “Generative AI is not intended to replace human creativity, but it may be used as a supportive tool in clearly defined and responsible contexts — for example, in early concept phases or during initial idea exploration. In working with external partners, we also expect transparency and clear contractual agreements to ensure that final creative results meet our high standards for originality, quality, and intellectual property protection. With regard to our current puzzle range, we have made a conscious decision to work with illustrators who create designs without the use of AI.” The brand representative also acknowledged that older puzzles from before this new policy was in place may have used AI, and said that future production runs will include AI labeling on the packaging.

DeAnna Tibbs, one of the partners at Oakland Puzzle Company, doesn’t even think about competing on that level anymore. “We’ve kind of had to decide that we are a niche brand, very focused on quality and very art-forward,” Tibbs told Vox. She said that because Oakland hand-makes its pieces and pays its artists 10 percent royalties based on sales, running the business is much more expensive than if Oakland was using AI and manufacturing its puzzles overseas. 

What Oakland Puzzle loses in speed and profit, it makes up for in something less tangible. “We’re community connected, our material is locally sourced whenever possible,” Tibbs said, adding that the brand often works with union shops and worker-owned cooperatives. “We’re really trying to do things in a way that distributes wealth rather than consolidates it.” She hopes customers can appreciate it — even if the puzzles cost more as a result. 

While Oakland and other anti-AI puzzle companies are lauded on forums like Reddit regularly, she and other jigsaw pros said that the puzzle community isn’t a monolith. Yes, there are the vocal pockets that are strongly opposed to AI, but casual shoppers are less likely to notice or be aware of the problem, so it’s not going to affect their purchasing decisions. 

“A customer who wants a $9 puzzle at Walmart or Target, for example, is probably not our customer,” Tibbs said, adding that the sales at big-box stores are probably a good barometer of the general public’s feeling about puzzles. “I think there’s also a difference between being opposed to AI, but are you willing to pay what it costs to license real art, which is going to have a higher price tag?”

Tibbs is currently figuring out her company’s overarching guidelines on AI usage. While Oakland Puzzle does not support generative AI, Tibbs recognizes that some artists may use it for research and that illustration and photo editing software is incorporating more AI tools. She just wants to be transparent with her customers, and let them know that they’re supporting real artists when they buy from Oakland Puzzle Company. Routh and other puzzlists I spoke to also emphasized the importance of transparency (e.g., whether AI was involved in the creation of a puzzle) to at least give consumers the choice of what they are buying. 

For Brian Clarke, one of the artists that Tibbs works with, the money he makes from commissions and licensing his art in puzzles is crucial to his livelihood. It takes him anywhere from three to six weeks to create a piece that eventually becomes a puzzle. Generative AI could do that in seconds, and Clarke, who has been working as a commercial illustrator for more than 25 years, told Vox that he’s lost out on opportunities — not just in the puzzle industry — because of that turnaround. 

While it might seem a little surprising that the important cultural battle over AI is being waged in the field of jigsaw puzzles, Clarke explained that puzzles are exactly where he got his creative spark. They were the first pieces of art in his life, and a foundational part of his training. 

“I was a little kid in the late ’60s, early ’70s, and that was the era of illustration,” Clarke said. “Everything was illustrated. Magazine covers, book covers. Just everywhere you looked, you’d see illustrations, and jigsaw puzzles were very popular then.” 

Clarke and Tibbs view the small but vocal AI puzzle backlash as part of a bigger cultural shift that they hope ignites an appreciation for human artists. 

They don’t believe it’s necessarily a losing battle. “I think anyone with a conscience about these things kind of has to have hope that these sensibilities are going to trickle to the rest of the country and overcome the economic powers at work,” Tibbs said. 

Delphia also hopes that human-designed puzzles remain the norm, but she has a backup plan just in case. As she nears retirement, she’s being more selective with new puzzles while also curating a collection of puzzles from before 2024, when AI art really exploded. 

“If I never buy another one or AI completely takes over in another two years,” Delphia said, “I will have all the puzzles that I need for the rest of my life, and I just won’t give a damn.”