The 20th mainline entry in the Touhou Project series, Touhou Kinjoukyou: Fossilized Wonders, officially releases in August 2025. Ahead of launch, the game got a demo release on Steam (a bit later than intended due to it being rejected from the Steam store for its “overly simple” description). The Steam release, however, managed to stir up controversy among fans both in Japan and overseas, namely because of the disclaimer that the new Touhou game contains AI generated content.
Fans had previously speculated that some of the in-game content, most notably the spellcard backgrounds, may be AI generated due to their appearance. With the release of Fossilized Wonders’ Steam demo, these doubts may have been confirmed, as the disclosure regarding AI generated content on the game’s steam page reads:
Many fans of the Touhou series have voiced their concerns on X regarding AI generated content, stating that ZUN’s usage of AI goes against the do-it-yourself spirit the Touhou community has been cherishing for almost 30 years. Some of them have even offered ZUN to create the new backgrounds for him to replace the AI generated ones, for free.
Over on the Japanese side on X, users expressed their disappointment over the fact that, while the AI generated content disclaimer was posted on Steam, it was not posted on Fossilized Wonders’ DLsite page – accusing ZUN of falsely advertising his game. However, this seems to have been corrected in the meantime, as the game’s DLsite page includes a “Partial AI Use” tag at the time of writing.
On a lighter note, an X user has also pointed out that the word “AI” in the Steam store description is spelled with a lowercase “L,” making this situation feel slightly more bizarre than it already is. They jokingly explained that this means Touhou was actually not AI-generated, but alcohol-generated content all along.
“When I converted the text, it was in fact AL, not AI. I guess Touhou was alcohol-generated content after all…”
