An illustration of generative artificial intelligence in The New Yorker raises questions

Illustration for The New YorkerProfile of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman It is a jump scare. Altman stands in a blue jacket with a blank expression. A group of disembodied faces hover around his head – the terrifying Altman, their expressions ranging from anger to open-mouthed woe. Some hardly resemble Altman. One last face falls into his hands. And below, there’s a revelation that might scare many illustrators much more: “Visual by David Zauder; created using AI”

Zauder is a mixed media artist who has been working with collage, video, and generative artistic processes that predate commercial AI tools for more than a decade, most recently teaching art and technology at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest. Here, his work leans into the elusive ambiguity of Altman’s Two-Face (or More). The pained expressions on the faces and the frightening sheen of movement that softens them convey the central thesis that Altman cannot be trusted. There’s a painterly look to the image, rather than the typical haunting gloss, but the AI ​​origins remain clear and unmistakable.

What does he say to The New Yorkerone of the most prestigious magazines in America, to adopt generative artificial intelligence? At its worst, technology eliminates any discernible artistic process, flattening the creator’s intent—a system of making. Pregnant video of LeBron James and Italian brainrotnot creations that compete with work The New Yorker Painters like able nelson, Christoph Niemannor Victor Ngai. In Zauder’s hands, it’s much more complicated: one part of a longer creative process, which apparently involves programming his artificial intelligence tools and feeding them archival images, such as newspaper clippings and family photos.

However, this is still, in my opinion, a waste of opportunity. Human artists have created creativity Parody of artificial intelligence rampBut AI lacks the self-awareness needed to simulate itself, even with a human behind the wheel. The picture relies on the unsettling nature of AI animation to tell its story without saying anything new about AI imagery or the industry behind it all.

When we reached out to Szauder, although he wasn’t specific about the AI ​​tools he used, he explained the process of the piece in some detail. There is usually a sketching phase before any final images are delivered. The New YorkerZauder sent about 15 different sketches to senior art director Supriya Kalidas, including the one that ultimately led to the final Eldritch brutality that can be seen above the article, says its digital design director, Aviva Michaeloff. In an email to us, Zauder wrote:

“For the basic structure of the final image, I had a clear idea of how I wanted to position the character and their heads. So the AI worked more as a tool than usual, especially since much of the work focused on shaping faces, heads, and portraits, through a combination of classic editing methods (Photoshop, if we want to call it that) and AI-based editing. The results were often incomplete or flawed, requiring manual correction and refinement. We spent a lot of time refining facial expressions, while also developing multiple looks in clothing and repeatedly adjusting lighting to achieve To the final image.

According to a 2025 article by Szauder from Whitehot MagazineHe “managed to devise his own coding system and software program to create images based on specific material or archival images that he fed into their design.” He also seems concerned with the ethical quandary of generating conventional images using artificial intelligence, using “ethically annotated source material.”

As Sauder explained to us, “I strongly believe that even in the age of artificial intelligence, the image must first be formed in the human mind, not in the machine.”

This is a much deeper human touch than what goes into many works produced by artificial intelligence. Newsroom immersion has been well documented by others edge The book. Great journalists everywhere have been completely replaced by AI or have been told they have no choice but to find ways to use it to keep their jobs. Our parent company, Vox Media, has too Agreement with OpenAI.

the topic (and Disagreements) Using AI in illustration is a huge cortisol spike for most illustrators. It’s not the first time Popular post He has Get involved in artificial intelligence. It’s also not the first time The New Yorker He has Commissioned David Szauder to create an AI-animated illustration.

Here in EdgeWe follow a strict policy on the use of AI-generated images. We yellow-mark any image we post that has been created using AI, and any time we use AI image generation to help create an image, it is Exposed, loudly, and with clear justification.

In many cases, images created – especially those created through text prompts only, which is probably the most common method – exclude the creative process that makes art human. Input from a text field only has so much impact on the output, that AI-generated images created in this way cannot be copyrighted. In accordance with the US Copyright Office’s guidance on legal authorship of AI-generated images“No matter how many times a claim is revised and resubmitted, the final output reflects the user’s acceptance of the AI ​​system’s interpretation, rather than the authorship of the expression it contains.”

The artist’s eye is enlightened throughout his life by amassing an internal library of taste, meaning, and intention, which tools like Midjourney or ChatGPT don’t have. The results of image prompts often sound like someone describing a dream: It’s great when your brain is putting it together, but tell someone else your surreal vision of dealing with your therapist before all your teeth turn to dust and disintegrate, and their eyes glaze over until the subject changes back to the weather. A dream becomes valuable (outside of an awkward Zoom call with your therapist) when it is human He makes an effort to translate it into a work of art – It’s not just the idea, it’s the process that makes it convincing.

Meanwhile, although we don’t know the statistics for editorial illustrators, AI does Definitely stealing technical jobs. There are some painters who absolutely swear by these tools. Others have found it useful for surviving in a difficult field, such as illustrators who have experimented with feeding artificial intelligence image generators. Their own work Or more practical applications like using Photoshop’s AI-powered Remove Background tool. Art budgets are often the first belt tightened at any editorial publication in the midst of a revenue-bleeding death spiral. Freelance work is so fragmented that it is functionally impossible to unionize, and illustration is a trade rife with exploitation, with rates that are a race to the bottom. As a former freelance artist, I’m not here to judge David Szauder for his process — which, again, seems much more complex than that of the average AI image creator.

But there’s still a question about whether Altman’s piece — which uses the visual aesthetic of job-stealing, alien AI to illustrate Ronan Farrow’s essay on the dark prince of job-stealing, superhuman AI — works. Zauder is doing what countless AI proponents have asked for: using it as part of a larger technical toolkit to convey an idea. What are the results?

Although I think it succeeds fundamentally in getting the story across, the final image feels like an attempt at descriptive commentary that fails thematically. If you’re not familiar with the obvious signs of AI imagery, you might miss this comment entirely. Although the image was a clear giveaway of the AI ​​origin for me and the rest of our art team, it has none of the stylistic aspects of some of the Other works by Zauderleaving the central visual metaphor to do the heavy lifting for the idea, giving the whole thing a sick but somewhat boring feel.

The inconsistent resemblance on all the faces (something the portrait artist could have controlled) is clear evidence of the AI’s limitations, and the artificial studio background environment makes the whole thing look like an elementary school photo from Lifetouch. The ambiguous intent and bland presentation create more questions for the viewer than the story of Sam Altman’s many faces.

In contrast, the other Szauder The New Yorker piece It seems to come from more interesting source material. It’s more cinematic, the sinuous texture of the colorful pit walls Its echoes go back to the early days of artificial intelligence When the end results were more chaotic and unpredictable.

I don’t want to tell anyone who works in a risky field like freelance editorial illustration how they’re supposed to feel about AI. The decision to hire Szauder to clarify The New Yorker It doesn’t scare me personally. It’s a much more logical editorial decision than a “best writing anywhere” publication that fills its negative space with Jesus shrimp and… Whatever the fuck this is. Inviting AI images to the pages of a world-renowned publication is certainly a slippery slope, and could be seen as normalizing the use of AI across the illustration industry. but The New Yorker He did not create this problem, nor did he single-handedly create the uncertainty that illustrators have faced since long before we had the AI ​​generation to deal with. Very similar Szauder’s rabbit hole first The New Yorker Image by Amnesty InternationalThey get stuck in it just like the rest of us.