When the beloved country singer Dolly Parton and equally beloved actor Tim Curry both died in late August, a cartoon showing them arriving at the pearly gates of heaven went viral. Tim was dressed as Frank-N-Furter from Rocky Horror, and Dolly was telling God: "I knew I chose the right plus one."
It was just the kind of sweet tribute you'd expect to see after the passing of two global celebrities, so close to each other. Nothing particularly groundbreaking, but certainly very shareable. In the corner was the signature "BLOPER", the pen name of New Yorker cartoonist Brendan Loper.
One problem, though: Brendan didn't draw it. A fan of Dolly Parton had simply asked ChatGPT for "a New Yorker-style cartoon", and the chatbot had made one. Then – and here's the kicker – faked Brendan's signature for good measure.
Brendan first heard about this from his brother; then emails and DMs from strangers started piling up. "I had people writing to me about this cartoon, asking if it was mine," he told Nieman Lab, a reporting project at Harvard University that covers the future of journalism. "It was very surreal."
Nieman Lab went on to investigate further, and identified more than 15 New Yorker cartoonists whose signatures have been appearing on ChatGPT images.
I've covered plenty of AI controversies over the past few years, but this feels like a pretty big deal to me.
Yes, the line between inspiration and outright copying is a murky one. But a fake signature is crossing the Rubicon. It's making a clear statement that a human, a named human, has made this work and stands behind it. And in this case, an utterly false one.
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A billion dollar company has created a platform that purposefully imitates work and passes it off as their own. And that's wrong; legally, ethically, morally, any way you care to slice it. For anyone who works as a creative, this is massive.
After all, your name is your reputation, your business. Imagine a potential client stumbling across a piece of dodgy work with your name attached to it. If they told you about it, you could at least set the record straight. Yet in reality, they probably wouldn't mention it. They just wouldn't book you again, without you ever knowing the reason. It doesn't bear thinking about.
The lesson? Next time you see an image doing the rounds on social media, think before you like or share. You could be doing a fellow creative a great disservice.
Tom May is an award-winning journalist specialising in art, design, photography and technology. He is the author of the books The 50 Greatest Designers (Arcturus) and Great TED Talks: Creativity (Pavilion). Tom was previously editor of Professional Photography magazine, associate editor at Creative Bloq, and deputy editor at net magazine.