Recently, a clip came out from the Q&A panel in which someone asked about the use of Gen AI for the movie. The person asking the question stated that they, like many others, are concerned about how AI will be used for the Fablehaven movie, especially after the fiasco of Young Washington. For anyone who hasn't seen it, after comparing Generative AI to Steven Spielberg using CGI, the answer boiled down to "if it looks good, we'll use it; if it doesn't look good, we won't use it". I, for one, am concerned about the implications and am very against the usage of AI in movies, as I believe it is incredibly harmful to the environment and is completely unable to capture the same emotion that real art made by real humans is able to. I would be devastated if this beloved franchise from my childhood finally got brought to life in a movie and was ruined due to the use of AI, and I cannot support the notion of using it for the movie. I'm sure many others will agree with me, and I have seen the exact same concerns throughout the community and strongly hope people see this to spread support in the hopes that those in charge of this decision understand what it could mean if they decide to use something so divisive. I see on Reddit often that nobody has high hopes for this movie due to prior Angel films, and I would like to believe otherwise, but cannot stand behind it if Generative AI takes the place of real human emotion. Hugo is a rock golem given sentient life, but using AI to bring him to the screen would take that life right back from him. AI cannot capture the real art a movie requires.

We've been getting Hugo updates, but what about Mendigo? Was the image we saw his final version? Have changes been made? Lots of ideas were given in the Mendigo poll, but we haven't seen anything new. I don't mean to be whiny or anything, but social media updates are getting kind of sparse and the updates here are sort of nonexistent. Someone on here already mentioned this ( forgot your user, but you know who you are) so I'll kind of steal the idea. Why not do 'silly' updates? "we're still drinking the milk!" or something like that. A little behind the scenes never hurt, either, even if it's goofy stuff like costumes that absolutely don't fit who's wearing them or a failed drawing of something.

I had some questions and concerns about the AI usage that may or may not be used in the development of this movie, and when asking on Instagram if they were going to use AI I got immediately blocked. I paid for the Caretaker package and this is a weird and disprespecful way to treat people who have actively put money in for your film. Im very dissapointed in not only the AI usage but also how they decided to handle a basic question.

Fabelhaven is a story based off of creativity and protecting Nature. Generative AI doesnt follow those mo4als and steals from other artists. There are lots of artists within the Fandom, many of whom would love to help out. Please reach out to an actual artist instead of stealing from them.

I love Fablehaven, and I'm so excited for this project! I'm invested both emotionally and monetarily. I really don't want to miss out on any updates or involvement opportunities for backers... but it was so long between posts that I completely missed the last poll! (I had been checking daily, then every other day, finally once a week... then I had a couple really busy weeks, and I honestly forgot to keep checking, because there had been nothing for so long!) Is there a way to sign up for notifications of activity on this forum? I'm not on social media, so this forum is basically the only place I go (I do use YouTube, but apparently whoever manages the social media pages decided not to anymore when they stopped doing their weekly video updates - I miss those). To those in charge: since this site is for backers (who I assumed would get the perk of being the first audience/sounding board/more content than everyone else in the world), could we either have more regular posts (even if it's just a silly picture of someone drinking milk and giving us a thumbs up to reassure us work is being done, and maybe a sentence or two about what the focus has been recently, like "we're 75% through reviewing callbacks" or "our art department is hard at work on another mockup - stay tuned"), or could we send out emails to notify backers when there's some new activity?? I'm very excited to see and hear progress, and I know there's a ton of work to be done between steps before you can really show something, so I understand the difficulty in generating frequent content... but I'd ask for at least the same amount of effort here as you put into FB posts, for example. Again, I really am so excited to support this project, and just hope I won't miss any more opportunities to be involved in the future. I feel confident this team is taking this well-loved story in the right direction. Keep up the good work!! Our family is rooting for you!!