Artificial Intelligence Equals Actual Infringement
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An AI cartooning roundup: The Baltimore Sun continues it abominable images. Did Editor & Publisher join The Baltimore Sun in corrupting its pages with AI cartoons? The Hamilton County Reporter mends its AI cartoon ways. Cartoonists’ styles being stolen by AI prompters.
The Baltimore Sun continues its weekly(?) printing of editorial AI illustrated commentary. This week the paper ran its latest editorial-prompted AI-generated illustration on Sept. 27, 2026 and then followed it up two days later with a Joel Pett cartoon about the uncertain nature of AI in its Sept. 29, 2026. The Sun certainly is showing no uncertainty in its refusal to hire a cartoonist to draw its editorial cartoons.
Jonathan Lemon’s Sunday Rabbits Against Magic political comic strip came out the same day as the above Baltimore Sun image so doesn’t explicitly refer to that “cartoon,” though from what I have seen it could pertain to any and all of them.
But there are small victories in the righteous fight against AI scrapping for illustration..
Cartoonist Tim Hamilton tells of a save.
“I look at various local media sites including the Friday edition of my paper, the Reporter. As I was scrolling down page after page of various articles I came to page 10 and my heart dropped. There, within the writings of a guest columnist was an AI generated editorial cartoon. It apparently had been produced by the author and submitted to the paper to go along with his column.”
Campbell contributes a weekly cartoon to his local paper The Hamilton County Reporter. His disappointment led him to write a letter to the publisher about “this [AI] image printed in the paper I’ve spent 4 years working for.” The newspaper wrote back apologizing and recognizing that any cartoons in that paper should be produced by actual humans i.e.: Campbell.
One step forward, one step back. A couple days later Campbell was pissed because he had just been made aware that some scum had scrapped his art to make an AI generated image.
Sara Guaglione for Digiday reports on news publishers heading to D.C. to try convince Congress to pass legislation forbidding AI scrapping.
Chase DiBenedetto for Mashable describes the concerns of the publishers and the barn door they left open:
“AI companies are using disguised bots to scrape and steal original journalism with zero accountability,” said Roger Lynch, CEO of Condé Nast, which publishes magazines like Vogue, Vanity Fair, and the New Yorker.
“Despite concerns about the technology’s impact on the industry and news literacy, many of the industry’s heavyweights have negotiated ways to profit from their content being used for AI training and search.”
Reminding us of syndicates offering the comics for free on the internet decades ago and then upset about resistance to eventually try to monetize their product.
Christopher Downes style is stolen.
Oscar Moodley for the Hobart Mercury reports on a local mayoral candidate (or here) stealing Mercury cartoonist Christopher Downes cartooning style, which would be all too familiar to Hobart, Tasmania residents, for use in an AI generated political promotion.
“A Tasmanian cartoonist has called out the use of AI in the campaigning for the upcoming local government elections, after a Hobart City mayoral candidate was called out for mimicking their style with AI.”
“The cartoon was quickly picked up by users as a mimic of the style of Mercury cartoonist Chris Downes, causing Mr Posselt to add a disclaimer…’This cartoon is AI generated and not the work of Christopher Downes.'”
A guest column for the venerable Editor & Publisher looks like it is using an AI generated cartoon image even though they have real live cartoonist Rob Tornoe at hand for such matters.
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