ChatGPT can imitate a cartoonist. Now it’s signing their name, too

Brendan Loper started hearing from people who thought he’d drawn a cartoon circulating online. His pen name was on it, but the image had been generated with ChatGPT.

Nieman Lab documented signatures belonging to more than 15 New Yorker contributors on AI-generated cartoons. Those names can give a reposted image a convincing credit line, even when the artist had no hand in making it.

Why does a signature change the issue

Cartoonist Emily Flake told Nieman Lab that the drawings bearing her pen name looked like a blend of several artists’ styles. The signature was recognizably hers. In 2025, OpenAI said ChatGPT could emulate a studio’s style but not an individual artist’s. The copied signature raises a separate question about authorship.

That leaves an artist attached to a joke they didn’t write or draw. The person sharing it may never see the original ChatGPT prompt, and the person whose name appears in the corner may be left answering questions about it. Loper already has.

Did OpenAI’s safeguards stop the signatures

After Nieman Lab raised the issue, ChatGPT began warning that requests for New Yorker-style cartoons could conflict with its rules on similarity to third-party content. The warning didn’t end the problem. Nieman Lab still generated some cartoons carrying real artists’ names. OpenAI said it welcomes reports of unintended model behavior.

A separate ChatGPT image safeguard problem in June also persisted after OpenAI made changes, with researchers finding that small adjustments to their prompts still worked.

It’s unclear how the image generator picked up the signatures. Condé Nast signed a content deal with OpenAI in 2024, but The New Yorker said it had never licensed its cartoons for AI training. OpenAI declined to explain how the names appeared in its outputs.

Can readers check who made it

OpenAI’s public image verification tool checks for signals associated with images generated by its products. Finding one can point to OpenAI’s involvement. It can’t confirm that the artist named on the cartoon made or approved it.

A result with no signal isn’t proof of human authorship, either. Sharing or editing an image can strip its metadata or make its watermark harder to detect, and coverage varies by when and how the image was created. If a cartoon carries a familiar signature, look for it in the artist’s portfolio or the publication’s archive before crediting them.