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Following accusations of Square Enix using AI-generated (or, well, AI-assisted) art on its cover for the Kingdom Hearts Collection, it seems some retailers have received a different version to swap the original one out for.
Kingdom Hearts fans have had quite a month after a surprise Nintendo Direct finally dropped news on Kingdom Hearts 4 and unveiled a nice bundle of the original three games coming to console (no more crappy cloud downloads, yippee): the Kingdom Hearts Collection.
The set itself is exciting, but its reveal was dampened a bit as eagle-eyed fans spotted the cover art outside of Japan looked a whole lot like it had been at least partially AI-generated.
There are various threads on the allegations online, with folks pointing out Donald's odd fingers, Sora's shoe, and much more as potential indicators that Square Enix used AI to touch up its initial cover art – cover art that the Japanese Collection always boasted.
Now, though, it appears that the supposed AI-assisted version is being pulled from retailers' advertisements and replaced with the one used in Japan.
🧵THREAD - The AI-Assisted Kingdom Hearts Cover 🧵 So, this cover have been pointed out for being ai-generated. Yeah it's shit. BUT after I did some dig in, it's actually kinda more complicated than this. So let me expand on this 👇
— @kahene.bsky.social (@kahene.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-06-22T10:13:53.652Z
Have a quick peek at Amazon, for example – the Kingdom Hearts Collection's cover art is no longer the strange overseas version… It's the OG. Not every retailer has updated its listing for the bundle yet, however.
You're still able to find the copy that fans believe was run through an AI generator over on GAME, for instance. Heck, it's still up on the actual official Square Enix storefront, a place you'd likely expect it to have been changed first.
It is important to note that Square Enix hasn't actually responded to any of the allegations floating about the web itself, seemingly opting to just quietly swap out the problematic cover art for its non-controversial version.
There's no telling whether the company plans to address the debacle publicly as of now, but hey – at least it's making changes… because let's face it, Donald Duck just doesn't look right, does he?
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