AI is Hurting Comics—and Making You Dumb
I couldn’t trust the stock photos so here is my dog Captain on his first birthday.
Generative AI slop has sadly become mainstream and is quickly encroaching the realm of comic books. Accusations over variant covers in 2024 resulted in DC Comics pulling issues from stands, Colin Kaepernick created an AI based comic book company, and with the recent Studio Ghibli controversy, it appears AI is winning its war against creators—not against cancer or climate change.
Many creators have a distaste for generative AI images because it’s based on learning the works of humans and stealing styles and methods to create soulless garbage. What is particularly concerning is how easy it is for the average person to generate an image from accessible online platforms or forced add-ons on devices like the iPhone from Apple. In other words, generative images are becoming the new normal.
If you’re not angry about this—you should be. Tolerating AI to write scripts or generate images is to accept humanity being as good as dead with the date of death being ChatGPT’s birthday.
“You’re just being dramatic.”
No, humans aren’t being dramatic enough. If AI has learned by stealing from books and art that came before it, then there will never be a way for it to create something new. Novelty of style and ideas are inherently human and society permitting AI to generate content means nothing new can exist. Creators will no longer feel comfortable sharing their art on social media as they will worry AI is monitoring their works to steal, and ironically accessibility to artistic styles will diminish, not expand as some talentless generators like to argue.
As someone who writes about comics, I genuinely worry about writers and artists who are being robbed and their works being mimicked without consent, compensation, or respect to copyright.
Small Press creators are especially in a tough spot because the accessibility of AI means a risk of “creators” flooding the market with plagiarized trash. Most cons prohibit AI “art,” but there are risks of ill-intended people finding loopholes and saturating the market.
It is the stance of Pages and Panels to never knowingly review or cover a comic book where AI was used to generate content. For anyone wondering, yes, I have been asked to cover a comic where the “creator” claimed the script was their idea but they JuSt UsEd Ai FoR tHe aRt. (I obviously told them no.)
The latest online discourse about AI generated content has been on the subject of writing and the use of em dashes. I have used them for years and if you find that they are used incorrectly, at least you can trust the writing was done by a human and not a machine.
I can’t find a reason why AI in its current form or exhaustive use of resources like water needs to exist. No, I am not being a Luddite who is against technology, but can’t we find a way to have AI that benefits humanity like coming up with sustainable farming practices, aiding researchers in finding cures, or helping find a way to solve the ever growing amount of microplastics that have now been found in our brains?
Creativity is human, let’s let it stay human.
Before I get off of my digital soapbox I also want to express how relying on AI is making people dumb. Forbes did a piece about how AI resulted in humans outsourcing mental processing and younger generations were creating dependencies on AI tools. At risk of sounding like the old man yelling about the youth, there should be very real concerns about how much AI is driving its claws made of melted servers into society and essentially defining what it means to be human.
Automation has been a long time coming, but the practical applications like cars going from stick shift to automatic transmission are no longer the focus. Automation is coming for all of our souls and if we don’t push back, what’s left?
AI is already a hot topic at most companies, but if there is anything to take away from my ramblings it’s to not allow yourself to let AI take the parts of you that make you who you are and to seek and support real creators. Not only will you find inspiring works that come from lived experiences and emotions, but you’ll do your part to keep the fabric of humanity intact—no matter how tattered it becomes.