The End Is Artificially near

Artificial intelligence was designed so computers can mimic the human mind, mostly in areas of problem-solving and decision-making. Naturally, it was designed to help us humans but many people fear we’re creating Skynet. If you don’t know what Skynet is, then you need to bone up on your geekiness. Some designers of A.I. have come out against it asking rhetorically, “What have we done?”. Artists and writers are concerned about being replaced too.

There’s a half-joke on the internet that creators don’t have to worry about A.I. because it works on request, and the people who commission artwork (editors) NEVER KNOW WHAT THEY WANT. For the most part, this is true.

Late last year, political cartoonist Rick McKee created an A.I. cartoon. From what I understand, this is done with a computer program where you tell it what you want. As Rick explained it, “I generated the bulk of this cartoon using MidJourney, a text-to-image generating AI. After many failed attempts and lots of tinkering, I finally got something I felt represented what I was going for….”

Rick did not create this cartoon to take a shortcut, cheat, or establish a new way to create his cartoons. He was experimenting and trying to see if he could do it. He also said he’ll never do it again. I have concerns about this, not with Rick, but in general.

I have the same concern with A.I. cartoons as I have with memes. Will nobody care if there’s a human behind it? Will nobody care who did it? Will there not be accountability with the creation? I read a column a couple years ago where an editor suggested publishing internet memes in place of political cartoons. So, yeah…I’m scared.

A.I. art is created with artwork created by humans. The Terminator will not figure out how to draw big noses. Instead, the Terminator will steal someone else’s drawing of a big nose…and then use that to kill Sarah Connor’s cartooning career. For example, Rick’s A.I. cartoon uses his idea but most of the artwork isn’t his. He probably doesn’t even know who the artwork is taken from. To be fair, he doesn’t take credit for the artwork that’s not his.

So, what happens the next time I tell a reader that I can’t draw his or her great cartoon idea (because my ethics won’t allow me to do it and the idea isn’t really great)? People submit ideas to me all the time with the note, “I can’t draw but I came up with this great idea of a clown car” Well, now you don’t have to know how to draw. Editors can now just speak into MidJourney and say, “Give me a weather cartoon that won’t piss off any readers.” It’ll be cheaper than hiring Jeff Koterba (we’ll get there).

Daryl Cagle, owner of the cartoon syndicate Cagle Cartoons, does a podcast, and his most recent is on cartoons and artificial intelligence. The concern among Daryl and his guests is that we will be replaced, though Daryl assures us in the talk that he’ll never use A.I.-generated cartoons (although he already has), which I’m kinda skeptical of because he already uses Rivers, the “anonymous” cartoonist, and sends that to editors in direct violation of their ethics policies. If you’re going to sell anonymously-drawn cartoons and tell newspapers their journalism ethics policies don’t apply to cartoonists because cartoonists are not journalists, then why wouldn’t you sell memes and cartoons created by A.I?

Rivers is also one of the guests on the podcast but nobody catches the irony of asking him about the ethics of artificial intelligence-created cartoons.

Daryl says in the podcast that some editors have written to him, concerned that he may one day distribute A.I.-created cartoons. It’s a little comforting to hear that editors are against this but they’re asking the right guy because the first syndicate that sold cartoons in direct violation of journalism ethics was Cagle Cartoons. Daryl Cagle will be the first guy to sell cartoons that don’t require the accountability of a signature. If you don’t believe me, ask Rivers.

Rick McKee is also a guest on the podcast and he’s a great choice since he is the one who created the first A.I. political cartoon, so he knows what he’s talking about on that end. Another guest on the podcast is gag cartoonist Andy Singer who said he’s not worried about A.I. eliminating his job as his job had already been eliminated for a long time. He and Daryl discuss how the markets are drying up for cartoonists while ignoring that Daryl has played a huge hand in drying up those markets.

Jeff Koterba (we’re here), who Daryl calls his “most popular” cartoonist, is also on the podcast. I believe the claim is true as Jeff has multiple cartoons in each of Daryl’s top-ten lists (the cartoons used the most that week by newspapers) which I believe is because his work is not very opinionated. I don’t say that to bash Jeff (he’s one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met and he works hard at what he does), I say it as a fact. Judge for yourself. Every political cartoonist working today can tell you that most newspapers are steering away from hard-hitting cartoons. For example, this is what The Washington Post has started running on its opinion page on a regular basis.

Jeff asked a great question on the podcast and it was whether it would be wrong or not to use an A.I. program to create cartoons using your past artwork. I don’t think that would be any more wrong than in the way cartoonists like Dave Granlund and Bob Gorrell create their cartoons now using their own past artwork. Using just Bob as an example (because it’s easy to find), look at this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and… I think you get the point. What’s the difference between A.I. and Bob Gorrelling your cartoon? Yeah, I just used his name as a verb.
Also, I just discovered someone at GoComics is doing this research daily with the username Grading Gorrell.

Also, the Bee Gees did this back in the 70s. I just saw the documentary on CNN. Their drummer was out of town, so they took a pre-recorded drum track and wrote an entirely new song around it. Instead of having the drummer lay down a new track when he returned, they simply kept the pre-recorded track. Maybe anytime someone creates a cartoon using pre-drawn artwork (other people’s), we can shout out “Disco!”

Should people who create art fear artificial intelligence? I’m with Andy Singer. Most of our jobs have already been eliminated. In my case, my client list is about half of what it was before the pandemic. Some of my clients don’t use cartoons anymore, others replaced with me softer cartoons, and some replaced me with cheaply-priced bundles of cartoons offered by the likes of Cagle and other syndicates. Then there are the papers in chains (like Gannett) where all content decisions are made at some corporate HQ which then buys the same cartoons for all their newspapers (usually, from Cagle), and other newspapers have gone out of business. It’s getting tougher and tougher to make a living at this. If you don’t believe me, ask Daryl, who despite being the leading syndicator of political cartoons has a pop-up window on his site asking for donations (I do too. Look below).

What I fear more than artificial intelligence are the people in this industry who make decisions on cartoons who don’t care about cartoons. What I fear even more are editors who can’t even identify political cartoons. In the past, we used to just fear editors who couldn’t tell a good cartoon from a bad one. OK, I still fear that too. This is an industry that tells its customers that their papers have improved in quality despite having less content, less news, and fewer staffers to create the paper. In some locations, subscribers aren’t even receiving their papers on the day they’re published.

So many editors and publishers don’t care about their newspaper’s content anymore. If an editor isn’t going to care that a cartoon was drawn “anonymously” in direct violation of their journalism ethics policy, then why would that editor care if it was drawn by a robot?

Seriously, if you want a cartoon that looks like it was produced by the “anonymous” cartoonist, then enter “Jeff MacNelly” into your A.I. program and sign “Rivers” on the result.

Now, I’m off to find out why so many cartoonists keep blocking me on social media.

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