ChatGPT Caught Putting Signatures of Real Cartoonists on AI-Generated Comics

According to Nieman Lab, a cartoon showing Dolly Parton and Tim Curry went viral on Twitter in the days after the legendary entertainers' deaths in late August[2], and in the bottom right corner of the cartoon is the pen name "BLOPER," the signature of New Yorker cartoonist Brendan Loper.[2]TechSpot reports that Loper told Nieman Lab he did not draw it, and that the image was generated by ChatGPT and first posted to Facebook by a Dolly Parton fan[3]. Loper told the outlet: "I had people writing to me about this cartoon, asking if it was mine."[3]NewsBytes reports that over 15 New Yorker cartoonists' signatures have been used by OpenAI's image generator without their permission or compensation.[4]Loper told Nieman Lab: "I'm not a territorial person, but my name is my name. It felt very much like a violation of my personhood."[2]According to Nieman Lab, a spokesperson for The New Yorker said Condé Nast has never granted an LLM developer permission to train models on its cartoons.[2]Lapaas Voice reports that OpenAI described the behavior as unintended and said it appreciates reports of model bugs.[5] NewsBytes reports that ChatGPT then began warning that such prompts "may violate our guardrails concerning similarity to third-party content"[4], but that it still signs some generic cartoons with real New Yorker cartoonists' names.[4]