AI-generated Batman comic gets slammed by artists
A social media post boasting about the ability of the latest version of text-to-image artificial intelligence (AI) tool Dall-E to create comics was widely mocked by artists over the weekend.
On Saturday, Twitter (now X) user and AI enthusiast Ammar Reshi posted a 4-panel fan-made comic of Batman, which he said was generated in OpenAI’s recently-released Dall-E 3.
Although a few other AI fans on Twitter/X were impressed by the comic strip, several prominent comic book artists were not moved.
“You could do the same thing a while ago with a photocopier and some scissors,” said comic book artist Javier Rodriguez.
“Stealing other people’s art seems easier now and lucrative for those behind generative models.”
Ramon Villalobos called the comic “s**t” and a “mess”, pointing out that the Batmobile switched designs between two of the panels and that the Joker design was clearly swiped from someone else’s creation.
Twitter user Sarah Horrocks said the Joker design was copied from British comic artist Brian Bolland’s version.
Bolland’s version of the Joker features in the famous one-shot graphic novel Batman: The Killing Joke.
“The shamelessness of this ‘technology’ is appalling. I guess it’s okay to steal. Just call it AI,” Horrocks stated.
OpenAI’s latest image generation model, DALL-E 3, makes it SO easy to create comic books!
Here are 4 panels for a fan-made Batman comic made in under 5 minutes.
Prompts included in the ALT.
Enjoy!🔥 pic.twitter.com/9LhZj4I0KW
— Ammaar Reshi (@ammaar) September 30, 2023
Villalobos also said the style of the comic was inconsistent throughout.
“Not surprising AI art enthusiasts think it’s a huge achievement though, because they are complete dummies,” Villalobos added.
Another comic book writer — Daniel Kibblesmith said the comics looked “exactly like a computer churning out a dog’ s**’ impression on a Batman comic.
“I know this is barely worth pointing out at this point, but look at the hands (of course) and Robin’s melty little face in the background,” said Kibblesmith.
AI models being trained on artworks and literature created by humans has sparked furious debate.
Seventeen prolific writers — including George R.R. Martin, John Grisham, and Jodi Picoult — have launched legal action against Dall-E creator OpenAI for training its ChatGPT AI model on copyrighted content.
Several artists have also filed a class-action lawsuit against OpenAI rivals Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt, claiming they effectively stole billions of copyrighted images to train their AI art generators.
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