Publisher and Artist Respond to AI Art Accusations Against New Game of Thrones Book

A Feast for Crows: The Illustrated Edition dropped on Nov. 4, 2025 to mass outrage by ASOIAF fans who allege the use of generative AI for the titular illustrations. This edition marks the 20th anniversary for A Feast for Crows and 5 years since A Storm of Swords: The Illustrated Edition was released. Needless to say, fans are angry after waiting half a decade for the new edition, only to be met with sub-par, potentially AI generated artwork.

Fans have taken to various social media platforms such as X and Reddit to demand answers from the publisher, Penguin Random House, and the artist, Jeffrey R. McDonald. Some have even attempted to demand answers from George R.R. Martin himself following his public lawsuit with Open AI for using his —and other authors’s— works to train large language models.

A Feast for Crows: The Illustrated Edition retails for $50 USD and fans believe the price is astronomically unjustified if the AI allegations are true. Regardless of the validity, many of the images do not match the scene they are meant to visualize and feature technical issues a trained artist would be aware of.

Based off the unpolished state of the artwork, it should not have been given the green light by management. Characters are missing legs, arms do not line up with the rest of their bodies, no heraldry is used in any of the paintings, characters look completely different than how they are described (looking at you Victarion with two swords, Jaime with long hair post-haircut, Robb’s crown, and Tywin), and everything is coated in the same shade of AI blue. Some images, such as the one of Lady Stoneheart, look as if they were taken with direct inspiration from well known ASOIAF artist Kay Huang’s iconic painting.

Check out this Imgur link to view the art.

Even if this isn’t AI, it’s still an insult to the fans of this beloved series.

A number of public statements have been made by the artist and the art management team of the book.

Raya Golden, the art director of Fevre River, released a statement on Martin’s Not A Blog on Nov. 10, 2025 denying the allegations of artificial intelligence use. Golden has worked with Martin for almost fifteen years as the art director of ASOIAF properties and should be the leading source on the art direction for the franchise. Their statement reads as follows:

“To our knowledge and as presented by the artist who completed the work in question there was NO such programing used. While he is a digital multimedia artist and relies on digital programing to complete his work, he has expressed unequivocally that no AI was used, and we believe him.”

However, just when you think the situation couldn’t get any more dramatic… the Not a Blog post updated.

“To our knowledge and as presented by the artist who completed the work in question there was NO such programing used. While he is a digital multimedia artist and relies on digital programing to complete his work, he has expressed unequivocally that no AI was used.“

The shift from “and we believe him” to completely removing the phrase hints at some behind the scenes changes following fan response to the Not a Blog post. Exactly what caused this change is unknown.

The artist of the A Feast for Crows: The Illustrated Edition, Jeffrey R. McDonald, took to Instagram to defend himself on Nov. 11, 2025.

“For the record I do not use AI.”

“As noted in the link provided all images go through a team or director for approval.”

McDonald attempts to clear his reputation by pivoting to the greater team and art direction of the book.

McDonald posted the original oil on canvas of the Mad King into Instagram to prove his innocence. It should be noted that particular image was scrutinized less than others for generative AI usage.

McDonald acknowledged the mistake many fans were up in arms about, what looked to be a crucifix in the corner of one of his paintings.

”Now to answer the question about the ‘cross.’ Sometimes when illistrations get published, the size is much smaller in a book or magazine. So there is much compression of the image. This is NOT a cross but a wall sconce for a candle. This is a minor piece of the composition and used for decoration and balance.”

McDonald asserts that the post processing of the art, in this case image compression, is what caused the “wall sconce” to resemble a cross. He fails to mention the wall sconce on the left hand side of the very same image that looks completely different than the “cross” and actually resembles a wall sconce with candles. That wall sconce was not effected by the image compression, apparently.

CEO of Penguin Random House, Nihar Malaviya, spoke about the usage of generative AI for books published under the house in an interview at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2023.

“At Penguin Random House, we’ve been working with artificial intelligence for more than a decade in different countries and different areas, primarily with machine learning, for example, to set the selling price of an e-book or to determine the starting print run of printed books. And wherever we have combined human activity and AI, it has led to better results.

Artificial intelligence is here to stay, probably with country-specific legal characteristics. The important thing now is for us to safely experiment and figure out how best to use generative AI to improve our work.“

The statement of the CEO is clear, Penguin Random House wants to use generative AI to “improve” their work and has already started implementing it.

It is very hard to parse through the information released to the public regarding this situation and no definitive conclusion about the usage of AI can be made. McDonald says that he did not use AI, but strongly hints at the failures of the project’s management team. Altering the Not a Blog post by removing the phrase “we believe him” shows the management teams lack of faith in McDonald, but also tries to absolve management of blame. Penguin Random House has gone on record to say they use AI, but has not explicitly said it is being used for art.

The bottom line is clear: the artwork in the illustrated edition is not up to snuff and fans are rightfully angry for receiving a product in this state.

Image Credit: A Feast For Crows: The Illustrated Edition, Random House Worlds