DC Comics stands for truth, justice, and a better tomorrow free from generative AI. The publisher “will not support AI-generated storytelling or artwork,” its president, Jim Lee, said during his panel at New York Comic Con on Wednesday (via The Verge) to cheers from the assembled crowd. “Not now, not ever, as long as [SVP, general manager] Anne DePies and I are in charge,” he continued, “because what we do and why we do it is rooted in our humanity.”
This pronouncement will surely come as welcome news for the DC fans concerned over allegations of AI use in select variant comic book covers last year. The company has since dropped the offending designs (and at least one of the artists that created them), emphasizing to io9around the time of the scandal that the company has “longstanding policies in place that all artwork must be the artist’s original work.” Lee reiterated the same philosophy during his panel, telling the audience, “People have an instinctive reaction to what feels authentic. We recoil from what feels fake. That’s why human creativity matters. AI doesn’t dream. It doesn’t feel. It doesn’t make art. It aggregates it.”
He continued by sending some strays towards the “unsettling knockoffs of Mickey Mouse lurking around online” to make the point that while characters like Superman may enter the public domain, “the character isn’t the magic, the storytelling is.” “Anyone can draw a cape. Anyone can write a hero,” he went on. “That’s been around as long as comics have been. It’s called fanfiction, and there’s nothing wrong with fanfiction… But Superman only feels right when he’s in the DC universe. Our universe, our mythos. That’s what endures. That’s what will carry us into the next century.”
Lee’s full speech is pretty heartening, especially as AI seems to be expanding into a different nook or cranny of the industry every day. Check it out below (starting around the 3:20 mark):
