my understanding is that this year the maripins took some bookings on an AI basis to see how it worked in practice. i believe it was only 20% of total bookings initially and was to be reviewed. there was also a problem with the local council not granting permission for them to offer AI to everyone because they were worried about the potential increse in calls to the emergency services.
i suspect that they are now going to offer AI to all for next year but would not think that they would make it compulsory as it would upset a lot of regulars, and not everyone on short breaks would want AI.
although i will be going AI there in September, and probably october, i hope they keep other board options

I tried several mock bookings to see what it came up with but none of them came up as having any vacancies