NJPW Tamashii's AI-generated event cards
It does not surprise me that Fale Dojo is the first local promotion to succumb to using AI-generated graphic design and photography for its marketing. To be frank, this is not even within the top 5 morally dubious shit they have done but it's just like man, what the fuck is the point of this.
I suppose with AI-generated graphic design I can understand you're saving time on a fairly stock standard layout—though personally I find it stupid to waste processing power with a bot that's dumb enough to regenerate the logo and background every instance1—but photography? Do you think this shit is making Tamashii look more attractive to prospective audiences? You have actual photographers documenting every event.
I previously have not brought up that individual indie wrestlers and refs also use generative AI in marketing and merch—and while I do not respect the use of image generation AI either way—the difference is first that those wrestlers and refs use generative AI to create images that aren't trying to look real. Pro wrestling already has the reputation of being fake and lame and using AI-generated photos does not help make it cooler among real sports fans.
Second, I can understand that indie wrestlers are just that: indie. It's equivalent to a mom and pop shop using AI flyers or logos, cringe but whatever. But while I have always called NJ Tamashii an indie wrestling promotion in the past, it's still fucking New Japan Pro Wrestling. You are a satellite branch of the third biggest wrestling promotion in the world, a name which every wrestling fan and every Japanese person knows of. I know that NJ Tamashii and Fale Dojo already has a reputation in the gutter because of those 2023 Reddit posts but there is no reason to make it even worse like this.2
Before writing this post, I was working on a piece about how many of Thailand's corporate websites featured custom graphics mourning the former queen who had passed away in 2025. One of the points was to be about how, if she had passed away in 2026, the graphics would have been made with AI instead—and might that be an insult to the late queen, to put her image though an unthinking algorithm that changes her face, to mourn her with the care of a push of a button? Whatever! Fale Dojo is ahead of the game in paying respects to Siva Afi with generative AI.3
The inefficiency of generative AI actually drives me crazy in this respect. You have the logo file right there. Why the fuck are you wasting energy recreating it from scratch so that the little circle brushstroke is inconsistent with every other image of the NJ Tamashii logo.↩
This would probably piss me off more if I had any respect for Fale Dojo to begin with but I had such a terrible first impression thanks to those posts that this is just another quirk of supporting this company. Seriously though, it's embarrassing.↩
Comparison with the original photo of Siva Afi (sourced from a 2012 post) and someone else's AI upscaling. In both instances they round out and lengthen Siva's relatively square, short jaw (as well as have no idea what to do with the flowers or necklace or eyes).↩
