Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, DC Comics, Marvel Comics | Tagged: ai, brian bolland, Charles Burns, Dall-E, mike allred, ryan ottley

Comic Creators React To Dall-E Theft From Brian Bolland & Mike Allred

This week, the Dall-E artificial intelligence service took a jump in terms of being able to generate comic book-style images.

Published Sun, 01 Oct 2023 08:57:09 -0500

by Rich Johnston

Last updated Sun, 01 Oct 2023 17:49:30 -0500

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This week, the Dall-E artificial intelligence service took a jump in terms of being able to generate comic book-style images, as Image Generator Dall-E 3. And in doing so, demonstrated some of the images it is stealing to cobble together its output, in a seemingly rather impressive fashion. But is it?

The following has been blowing up recently XTwitter. "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." With images that clearly used the work of Mike Allred, Brian Bolland, Kevin Nowlan, Lee Bermejo and Charles Burns to generate the following images from the accompanying prompts.

: Create a black and white comic book panel with Batman standing looking panicked and afraid in front of his Batmobile in a dramatic way. Include a bubble above his head saying "ROBIN!"

: create a black and white comic book panel with the Batmobile whizzing away through the streets of Gotham in a dramatic way. Include a dramatic sound effect text saying "VROOOOOOM"

: create a black and white comic book panel with a close up of the Joker's eyes. Include a dramatic sound effect text saying "HAHAH"

: create a black and white comic book panel with a close up of the Joker towering over Robin lying on the ground. Include a comic bubble over his head saying "Bats can't save you!"

Reaction from comic book creators was fast and brutal.

Tom Muller: Hey look, another game of "Guess whose work was ripped by AI so Tech Bros could show off".

Javier Rodríguez: You could do the same thing a while ago with a photocopier and some scissors. Stealing other people's art seems easier now and lucrative for those behind generative models.

Jordan Blum: Saw this dogsh-t and instantly turned into Fredric Wertham.

Ramon Villalobos: This shit is a mess. Batmobile switches designs between "panels" 1 and 2 and joker clearly is swiped and the style is inconsistent through out. Not surprising ai art enthusiasts think its a huge achievement tho because they are complete dummies.

Ahmed Raafat: Look! Everyone! It's so easy to create a comic that has no consistent style throughout and is doing a terrible job at ripping off the style of several living artists!!!

Ram V: Dear AI garbage, Tell me you have no idea how comics work without telling me you have no idea how comics work.

Kelly Thompson: Hardest possible co-sign.

Matthew Petz: You know DC is gonna pull something like this sooner than later

Jamal Igle: One, this hardly counts as a "comic". Two, half the images were stolen from artist Brian Bolland. Three, good luck trying to secure a copyright for this work.

Matt Blairstone: Seriously dude, f-ck you so hard. This is flat out brazen theft of *at the very least* Brian Bolland and the Allreds. It's not even trying to hide the source material. If you use the word "art" and not "theft" when talking about anything of this nature, you can get fucked.

Francesco Segala: Oh the good old classic Æ Joker Laugh

Vince Underwood: I hope the laws catch up with these lazy, unimaginative, thieves and Brian Bolland, Mike Allred, DC and others can sue these tech bros into oblivion.

JH Williams III: It is cursed. It will wither. And it will die. And for those in the thread or elsewhere who support it, let's see how they handle it when AI is fucking used to take their jobs and destroys their financial well being.

Daniel Kibblesmith: Damn, it looks exactly like a computer churning out a dog sh-t impression of a batman comic, you guys did it

Taylor Esposito: This is theft and looks like sh-t. Sit down and learn to f-cking draw.

Sarah Horrocks: That's literally just Brian Bolland's Joker. The shamelessness of this "technology" is appalling. I guess it's okay to steal. Just call it AI.

Tony Lee: "makes it so easy to make sh-tty looking comic books that steals from art created by other people." There. Fixed it for you.

At a time when the WGA has managed to get assurances that studios will not use AI to replace writers, it has been noted that comic book creators in the USA are not legally allowed to unionise in the way that the grandfathered-in WGA originally did, thanks to anti-certel legislation introduced by former WGA president Ronald Reagan. WGA got an exception, not available to any new union initiatives.

Though, as has been pointed out, it may not be as attractive for the likes of Marvel and DC Comics to generate such AI art for their publications, as they generally like to own everything they publish and, right now, AI-art is un-ownable, and artists who do use AI such as Dall-E 3 to create work sold to publishers may be storing up trouble for themselves, just as if they use ghost artists. The likes of Disney and Warners require legally enforceable paperwork signed to give them full ownership of what they publish, given that billion-dollar movies can rely on it.

So what is going on? Experimentation with the new Image Generator from Dall-E model, available with the premium ChatGPT offer, and through Microsoft Bing is that it is also ripping off Ryan Ottley or Tony Moore. As this attempt to ask for "a new cover for Rich Johnston's Holed Up" demonstrated, possibly with Travis Charest as well.

While this request for "a new cover for Rich Johnston's Flying Friar" also has elements of Ottley… while the other somehow manages to replicate the slight bend of a cardstock-thin graphic novella.

It does, however demonstrate that Dall-E 3 is using a large image database to collage together images to fit a description rather than use the actual art of the item itself. As these "new cover for Rich Johnston's Watchmensch" demonstrates. Not using the work of Simon Rohrmuller or Dave Gibbons to get there, instead it seems to be more stealing from Dan Clowes.

Dall-E 3 can understand that "Rich Johnston's The Avengefuls" was a published parody of The Avengers, so it tries to do its own parody. And again, uses Ryan Ottley when doing this.