Hmmm. This smacks of the worst kind of AI 'appreciation' of an existing character in an already popular game. The montiziation has created a monster who didn't create the character, just someone piggybacking on success of someone else, slimey. Only releasing it to people who pay for it is bad marketing early in the dev process, and shows that greed is driving the show. I can understand releasing early to patrons, it's a current model, but no no no free for anyone is just the worst for an AI game.
It's muddy waters, AI in general, but using a character written/created by someone else, where there is proof going back 5 years or so, to make money seems like a pretty solid case for a lawsuit, unless they are paying for the rights to the original character(s), which for some reason I doubt.