Warhammer Sage Labels AI the 'Internet's Asbestos' as Games Workshop Bans the Digital Heresy

A veteran architect of the grimdark future has dropped a prophetic warning, suggesting artificial intelligence might become "the asbestos of the internet." Jervis Johnson, the longtime designer behind Warhammer 40,000, Necromunda, and Blood Bowl, took aim at generative AI while endorsing Games Workshop's formal prohibition of the tech in its creative forge.

"Most of the stuff I've seen doesn't seem to actually quite match up to the hype," Johnson told gaming outlet FRVR, in a take more refreshing than a cold recaf after a hive city riot. "I saw a great quote recently saying that AI is going to be like the asbestos of the internet... we're going to be spending decades getting this stuff out again after we've used it a lot and found out it's actually a bit rubbish." A fitting analogy for something many are now scrambling to remove from their walls.

Games Workshop, the tabletop titan founded in 1975 and publicly traded since 1994, is a financial behemoth in its own right. In January, the purveyor of plastic crack reported about $422 million in revenue and roughly $178 million in operating profit for the 26 weeks ended Nov. 30, 2025—proving you can indeed mint serious capital without a single smart contract.

In its half-yearly report, CEO Kevin Rountree stated the company bans AI-generated content from its design processes and its unauthorized use externally, including in competitions. "We have agreed an internal policy to guide us all, which is currently very cautious," Rountree told investors, establishing a no-AI zone more secure than the Imperial Palace on Terra.

Johnson fully backs that policy. "I think it's the right move for a lot of companies, to be perfectly honest," he said, offering a stance clearer than a freshly polished power sword. "I haven't had a lot of experience with AI because I don't use it. It's not the way that I work, and I'm old so I don't have to. It's a newfangled kind of thing that I didn't really get involved with in the first place." A classic boomer take, but from a man who helped build universes.

He argued that generative AI fails to deliver top-tier creative work and may ultimately harm developers more than help them. "I think that if you're going to do stuff at the top end, do properly interesting, creative stuff, then AI doesn't help you," Johnson stated. "It's a hindrance basically because it allows you to be a bit lazy and not put in the effort." In other words, it's the creative equivalent of a participation trophy.

Johnson framed the development of Warhammer 40,000 as a monument to sustained human toil. "There was a lot of work involved there, a lot of thinking, and thought, and meetings, and planning, and discarding ideas," he recounted. "I worry that, with AI, what it does is it just cuts that out and shortcuts to kind of an average answer." Because in the 41st millennium, there is only war, not mediocre, algorithmically-generated blandness.