As Cartoonists Disappear from Newspapers, AI Images Are Moving In
The Australian newspaper Herald Sun recently ran a story about Victorian Premier Ben Carroll alongside an AI-generated illustration depicting him as a pirate. The image was clearly labelled as AI-generated. There was no attempt to hide how it had been made.
For cartoonists, though, it raised a different question: who will fill the editorial space that once belonged to an illustrator or cartoonist?
ABC News Australia reported on August 13 that News Corp has been using AI-generated illustrations for about two years. The pirate image in the Herald Sun was not a one-off experiment.
Australian cartoonist Fiona Katauskas says she is seeing AI illustrations more often in newspapers and on social media. Katauskas, who has worked as a cartoonist for more than 30 years, told ABC that seeing them felt like a “punch in the gut.”
Guardian Australia recently informed Katauskas that her contract would not be renewed. One of the better-known political cartoonists in the Australian press, she will now work as a freelancer.
There is no evidence linking the Guardian’s decision to the Herald Sun’s use of AI. They are separate decisions by separate news organisations. But the timing is hard to ignore.
Newspaper space for cartoonists was already shrinking. Now AI-generated images are appearing in some of that space.
David Blumenstein, deputy president of the Australian Cartoonists Association, told ABC that using AI-generated illustrations was damaging to the cartooning and illustration industry. His concern is not just the technology, but the choices being made by publishers and others who hire artists.
The Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance argues that editorial cartooning requires more than drawing skills. Political understanding and journalistic judgement are part of the job.
Australian publishers are not all following the same path. Nine Publishing, publisher of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, has encouraged staff to make greater use of AI tools. Its guidelines, however, say AI should not be used to generate photorealistic images or illustrations for publication, except when the AI-generated image is itself part of the story.
News Corp presents a curious contrast.
Earlier in August, chief executive Robert Thomson sharply criticised AI companies for using professional journalistic content without compensation. Without the work of journalists, authors and other professionals, he argued, users would be left drowning in low-quality AI-generated material.
Yet AI-generated illustrations are appearing in News Corp’s own newspapers.
News Corp can object to AI companies using its journalism while also using AI tools in its publications. But the argument is no longer confined to media companies fighting technology companies over copyright. Cartoonists are caught up in it too.
A newspaper cartoon was never just an image made to fill an empty space. A cartoonist reads the news, makes a judgement and sometimes draws something that does not even agree with the newspaper publishing it. Give the same story to ten cartoonists and you will get ten different cartoons.
AI can turn a politician into a pirate, a king or a superhero in seconds. The question is no longer whether it can do that.
How much will newspapers still need the idea, judgement and signature of a cartoonist behind the image?
The problem, of course, did not begin with AI. Newspapers around the world have been cutting ties with staff and regular political cartoonists for years. Economic pressure, changing publishing models and shrinking budgets were narrowing the space available to cartoonists long before generative AI arrived.
Artificial intelligence did not start this process.
But as cartoonists lose their places in newspapers, it is no longer certain that the spaces they leave behind will remain empty.
Sources
ABC News Australia
Cartoonists fear for future of industry with rise of AI-generated illustrations
The Guardian
News Corp subscriptions fall in Australia as company takes aim at ‘slimy’ AI slop
Crikey
Nine outlines AI ‘vision’ as it tells journalists to increase AI use
