ChatGPT generates fake The New Yorker cartoons and forges cartoonists' signatures
ChatGPT is adding real cartoonists’ signatures to fake New Yorker cartoons
A Nieman Lab investigation found that ChatGPT-generated cartoons in The New Yorker style carry the pen-name signatures of real cartoonists, involving more than 15 current and former contributors to the magazine, including Brendan Loper, Emily Flake, Joe Dator, and Pat Byrnes, none of whom were authorized or compensated. Loper's signature was first flagged to him by a stranger in May as appearing in ChatGPT output, and afterward a large number of imitation cartoons with real signatures appeared on Reddit's ChatGPT forum. An OpenAI spokesperson said the company values unexpected model behavior reported by the community, and after being informed by journalists, ChatGPT began prompting that the prompt may violate third-party content similarity guardrails, but as of press time it still signed some generic cartoons with real cartoonists' names. Condé Nast signed a multi-year content licensing agreement with OpenAI in 2024, but The New Yorker said it has never allowed any large model developer to train models on its cartoons; the magazine's cartoonists work under freelance submission contracts, with authors retaining copyright.