I’m a political cartoonist. AI is making a mockery of my profession

As artificial intelligence infiltrates virtually every aspect of modern life, I had assumed, completely incorrectly, that editorial cartooning was probably more or less immune.

Earlier this year, however, I got a rude wake-up call.

Several editorial cartoonists first sent me a set of cartoons by Pedro Molina and Rick McKee that had been run through what I assumed was ChatGPT. 

A guy (electronic entity?) working under the name of ToonAmerica had taken the artists’ drawings, converted them through AI and churned out virtually identical versions of their art, put his AI-signature on them and posted them on his Facebook page.

Naturally, I was appalled, not just on the artists’ behalf, but also because AI had made them artistically awkward and stiff, and then, to complete the electronic plagiarism, had the brass to sign them as his own.

A few days later, McKee sent me an AI version of my cartoon of President Donald Trump, dripping in a shower, exposing his bald pate with the words “Constitutional Crisis,” complete with the same font I drew.

For example, there is an AI program that can mimic my work. Type in Jack Ohman, and you get a lot of drawings that aren’t remotely like my art style. They’re better drawn than my work and not cartoons, but it can get you some beautiful AI San Francisco street scenes, cheaply.

The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, our professional industry advocacy group (I’ve been president twice), discovered ToonAmerica was redrawing many of our members’ cartoons in AI, right down to the labels and captions, and then posting them on Facebook, attempting make a profit off our work. 

I am pretty sure this sort of thing isn’t precisely illegal or in violation of copyright law per se. It’s just theft of intellectual property and completely pathetic.

I’ve noticed in the past few months that a lot of AI cartoons have popped up online in all sorts of venues, even on the sites of major internet personalities and journalists and Substacks. 

Now, do those same internet personalities notice that the cartoon art is boring and derivative? Nope. 

I spend hours and hours on my work, as do my colleagues. It is a time-consuming, demanding, meticulous profession. My cartoons are not renderable by a machine, as some lazy newspapers are trying to do with reporting.  

A few days ago, I was looking at my Bluesky account’s latest list of new followers and saw one who called himself an “AI editorial cartoonist.”

I’m sure he’s a nice guy just trying to get by with all the right intentions, but he’s not an editorial cartoonist. He’s a kid messing around on his phone. 

A real editorial cartoonist has to read a lot of stuff they don’t want to read, spot a plausible subject, decide what his or her position is on the subject, get an idea, do a pencil rough, ink it, color it in Photoshop and get it done by 2 p.m.

All AI does is act as a digital mynah bird. It’s like an impressionist calling himself president because he can speak like President Donald Trump.

The question now is: Who’s going to police this AI piracy and how?

In California, Assembly Member Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, D-Orinda, introduced AB412, the “AI Copyright Transparency Act,” and it has passed the Assembly and is before the Senate.

“As the AI industry continues to develop and expand, it is critical for content creators to know if and how their work is being used to train advanced models. The AI Copyright Transparency Act increases accountability for AI developers and empowers copyright owners to exercise their rights,” Bauer-Kahan said about her legislation.

This bill has been endorsed by the Screen Actors Guild and SAG-AFTRA, and has been driven more by Hollywood than piteous, hunchbacked editorial cartoonists working with 16th century materials like sable hair and ink. Still, it covers us, too. Gov. Gavin Newsom hasn’t taken a position on it yet.

Editorial cartoonist and University of Louisville law professor Marc Murphy, president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, added the organization’s support for the bill, noting that “our members create original works of art that speak truth to power. With the changing news media landscape, it is more imperative than ever that our members have full control and copyright over their creative work, without worrying that work is being used to train AI.”

Amen.

Geoffrey Hinton, a former Google vice president widely known as the “Godfather of AI,” said earlier this year that there are “risks that come from people misusing AI, and that’s most of the risks and all of the short-term risks. And then there’s risks that come from AI getting super smart and understanding it doesn’t need us.” 

Hinton also added that “I often say (there’s a) 10% to 20% chance (for AI) to wipe us out. But that’s just gut, based on the idea that we’re still making them and we’re pretty ingenious. And the hope is that if enough smart people do enough research with enough resources, we’ll figure out a way to build them so they’ll never want to harm us.”

For editorial cartooning, the future is now, and AI has come to wipe us out. 

We won’t be able to draw cartoons about AI’s virtually unchecked power if we’re wiped out, and, more importantly, you won’t be able to read them, either.

Jack Ohman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist who also writes at https://substack.com/@jackohman.