Street Fighter 6 is holding an art competition for fans, with the winners’ work set to be featured in the fighting game itself as New Challenger screens. These are art pieces that show up during online matches when you are challenged by another player, and feature some sick art of their chosen fighter. It’s a pretty neat opportunity, but in the era of generative AI, companies have to be more vigilant than ever about plagiarized or generated art for these kinds of events. Pokémon dealt with it last year when AI illustrations were submitted as part of its TCG art contest. Now, Street Fighter fans are suspicious of one of the finalists in its current competition, and the person who submitted the piece in question has deleted their social media.
Capcom’s second Street Fighter 6 art contest began back in June, with the company telling fans to submit their art on X (formerly Twitter) with the hashtag #SF6ArtContest2 in order to have it considered. The official contest rules outlined regulations, such as only including characters currently playable in the game (so not those featured in the upcoming third season pass, for example). One of the rules prohibits the use of AI-generated art, but now that Capcom has revealed the 26 finalists that will be implemented in Street Fighter 6, fans are suspicious of one finalist in particular.
One piece depicting the spray-painting ninja Kimberly has raised more than a few eyebrows in the Street Fighter community. An X account, @lilithascends, submitted the piece, as well as two other submissions featuring Akuma and Cammy. Once the Kimberly art was chosen as a finalist for the contest, other artists took note of some irregularities that made them suspect it was an AI-generated piece, and pointed out that their other submissions appeared to be lifted or traced from other sources as well.
Artists on X like @hoodratt20xx and @Galena_Bismon pointed out several oddities in the Kimberly illustration that were signs of potential generative AI use.
All of this, along with some anecdotal strangeness like their X account’s creation seemingly coinciding with the beginning of the Street Fighter contest, made @lilithascends’ submissions all the more suspect. Normally, this is where we’d reach out for comment, but both the X and Instagram accounts under the name @lilithascends were deleted almost immediately after this hoopla started. While none of this ultimately “proves” that AI was used in making this art, it does seem like cause for Capcom to look into it further. Right now, the contest has a winning submission for each of the 26 playable characters, and if this piece is AI-generated, that means it would have broken the contest’s rules, and another piece of Kimberly art could still be added to the game. We’ve reached out to Capcom for comment and will update the story if we hear back.
Update, 7/25/25, 8:30 a.m. ET: Capcom has released a statement announcing that it will be disqualifying an entry in the contest, but stopped short of naming the Kimberly one specifically. For the time being, the disqualified piece will remain in the voting area in the in-game Battle Hub, but a replacement will be provided “at a later date.” Here’s the full statement:
We want to extend a big thanks to everyone who participated in the latest Street Fighter Art Contest New Challenger Edition.
Unfortunately, we have determined that one of the winning entries violated contest rules, specifically Section 5 pertaining to: Entry Submission and Design Requirements.
After careful review and discussion, we have decided to disqualify the entry in question.
Please note that the entry in question will remain available for voting in the Battle Hub until the end of the voting period. We want to thank those who participated in voting for the entry in question. While the entry in question has been disqualified, we will provide a replacement illustration for the featured character at a later date.