Alleged uses of AI in Winx media

Categories: Animation , Winx Club 11 Sept 2026

It’s harder and harder to be a Winx fan

This blog was started with Winx Club. Beyond it just inspiring the first post, it was the main show and fandom that made me start thinking about creating In The Pillow Fort. When I realised that the fandom was alive and well, I jumped at the opportunity to become a part of it and dust off my wings. It’s also the show that is the biggest part of my childhood. More recently, it got me through burnout caused by university.

The trouble started before the Winx reboot was announced, when Winxers started making posts and videos about the materials seen at conventions which showed its early production stages. The whole fandom was buzzing and generating hype for this reboot that we hadn’t even seen yet. We were so happy to have the potential of the Winx girlies gracing our TV screens once again. I had a whole post written about it as well, ready to publish. Then the posts and videos started getting hit with copyright strikes. I forget if that was ever resolved or not, I just know it left a very bad taste in my mouth.

A year-or-so later shortform video introductions to the Winx fairies from the reboot were posted on Winx Club’s official Instagram profile. Many people noticed that the scripts used in those promotional reboot videos had a very similar structure to the one used by LLMs such as ChatGPT. An example of this being the “She’s not just this, she is also this.” sentence structure which can be heard repeated in all of the introductions. Fans also noticed that some of the concept art for the reboot and its early promotional materials were made in part with AI. Notably, the designs of Aisha, Faragonda, Ms. Griffin, professor Codatorta, and others. A Winxer who goes by @maikyodel on Instagram and Tumblr analysed a lot of the concept art and their findings were compiled in a Tumblr post if you want to look at them.

The creator of Winx Club, Iginio Straffi has addressed the fan speculations about AI-usage in the reboot by with an Instagram comment. He said that the “news about the use of AI is deeply baseless and spread by professional haters or competition.”, only to continue the same comment by saying: “If we want to use it in the future we won’t bother declaring it, but we certainty don’t like to be defamed.” The overall tone of the comment was very upset and defensive, which is natural if they truly did not use AI in the reboot? But the part about “not declaring it” if they use it, and the overall angry tone of the comment put me off. The comment was made in fall of 2025.

It is now summer of 2026 and Rainbow has partnered with the company PlayNook to create the official Winx Club interactive fiction Winx Club: The Awakening of Dark Musa. in their app. While this fully narrated text-based game has voice actors (who did an amazing job), I decided to dig deeper into the company after playing through the first chapter. According to a post on their official website: “PlayNook combines AI and the magic of sound to bring the world high-quality interactive audio stories.”. Additionally, PlayNook’s COO is cited saying “At PlayNook, we are taking it further with AI, sound magic, and an exceptional team of creatives, writers, and actors.”

The same post does not state in what form PlayNook uses AI or how much. It could very well be used for accessibility, as the post also states that the company wants to be inclusive. I don’t know much about that area, but that doesn’t seem bad. And the above quote also mentions the company having writers, so there definitely is some human input in it. However, the lack of transparency worries me, and yet again, leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

As someone who is anti-AI it is becoming increasingly hard to view Winx Club as fondly as I used to. It hurts. The claims about the reboot have not been officially confirmed and are alleged, however I do not want to support something that could have been made with AI. I was so excited and ready to pay for the other chapters of the new audiogame, only to see that the company uses AI but doesn’t state in what capacity.

All this combined has made it harder to post on the blog too. I still watch the OG show and get ideas about posts for it, but they’re followed by sadness. This is why I choose not to post about the reboot or other new pieces of official merchandise unless they have been confirmed as 100% human-made. I will start posting on In The Pillow Fort more often, but Winx content will be scarcer.

I made this post in case anyone wants to know about the AI allegations, as well as get my feelings out on paper. Thanks for reading it. I hope it helped.

Dorian

The blog’s header and the drawing featured atop this post were made by @ambybun on Instagram

The website design featured on the drawing was made by me

References

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