Grand Theft A.I.
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Last week there occurred a watershed moment in the history of American political cartooning. A major American newspaper, the Baltimore Sun, published an editorial cartoon created not by a cartoonist or graphic artist, but by unidentified staffers using artificial intelligence. One year ago, the Sun fired its Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, Kevin “KAL” Kallaugher. (Disclosure: KAL and I are friends.) Which AI model was used was not disclosed, but more likely than not it was ChatGPT by OpenAI. Why do I think so? I asked various AI models. I’m not a Luddite! As a cartoonist, my reaction was similar to that of most of my colleagues. I checked out the cartoon. It sucked. What the Sun published as a cartoon sucked worse than any cartoon ever drawn by any professional cartoonist could or ever has sucked, which is to say, a lot. This lickspittle slop sucked up to the mayor—no good political cartoon ever supports a politician, only criticizes them—and it…
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