National

As generative AI tools like Dall-E and MidJourney become more mainstream, some illustration competitions are banning the submission of AI-generated artworks.

Why it matters: Debate in the art world around the impact of technology is nothing new. But AI's unique legal and ethical considerations have prompted some organizations to take a definitive public stance.

Zoom in: Of the nine major illustration competitions Axios reviewed, only three allow AI submissions. 

 The ADC Awards told Axios via email that the competition "is the advertising and design industry’s first global awards program to establish a separate discipline with a dedicated jury for AI work."

 The Society of Publication Designers allows submissions created with AI, but clarified over email that they "are absolutely against art theft, but support artists who use [AI] legally and ethically." 

Society for News Design currently has no guidelines or bans on AI submissions: "Everything is moving so quickly," says executive director LeeAnn Mandrillo over email.

Generative AI tools are currently under legal scrutiny for their use of licensed imagery in their training models. Several lawsuits have already been filed against major AI art tools over copyright infringement. 

Complex questions over how the legal system will view human/AI collaborations will need to be settled by the courts.

Mark Heflin, director of American Illustration-American Photography, says that his organization’s stance on prohibiting generative AI is consistent with existing guidelines. 

In the case of generative AI, artists wouldn't be able to say the work is entirely their own — a requirement for the competition.

“Even if we wanted to change our rules, the concern is the way that some of these generative AI tools have been built by scraping licensed material.” Such training models make confirming authorship of the work precarious, Heflin says.

The onset of people sharing AI-generated images via apps like Lensa and Dall-E on social media prompted the Society of Illustrators to ban such images in its competitions.

“The gluttony of the sharing was startling. I saw the harm in this, and what it could mean to illustrators and artists," says Tim O’Brien, who served as president of the Society of Illustrators and worked with colleagues to issue a statement against allowing AI submissions. 

"This was a pro-human effort to celebrate what humans can do," he says. 

Yes, but: Technological controversies in the art world have sprung up in the past, including with the advent of photography. 

More recently, the use of stock imagery to create photo-composited work or even switching from physical to digital submissions for competitions have generated debate among art organizations, according to Heflin. And for a brief time, the Society of Illustrators did not include digitally constructed artwork in their annual competition.

But for now, says Heflin: “I don't know where the copyright lives and that's not for me to say. It's going to have to go to Congress.”

Between the lines: Congress has rarely moved quickly enough to keep up with new technologies' impact on intellectual property rules, and the odds are very high that these conflicts will arrive in the courts before new legislation can help untangle them, Axios managing editor Scott Rosenberg notes.

Disclosure: Shoshana Gordon served as a juror for American Illustration 41 in 2022.

Illustration competitions grapple with generative AI

AI's unique legal and ethical considerations have prompted some organizations to take a definitive public stance.

Illustration of a red ribbon with a "no" symbol on painting in a frame with binary code 

Artificial intelligence

Automation and AI

As generative <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="AI tools like Dall-E" data-vars-click-url="https://www.axios.com/2022/09/12/ai-images-ethics-dall-e-2-stable-diffusion" data-vars-content-id="08411dc8-65dd-4ab5-a36d-74767542a696" data-vars-headline="Illustration competitions grapple with generative AI" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.axios.com/2022/09/12/ai-images-ethics-dall-e-2-stable-diffusion" target="_self">AI tools like Dall-E</a> and MidJourney become more mainstream, some illustration competitions are banning the submission of AI-generated artworks.Why it matters: Debate in the art world around the impact of technology is nothing new. But AI&#x27;s unique legal and <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="ethical " data-vars-click-url="https://www.axios.com/2023/01/31/chatgpt-ai-arms-race-ethics-competition" data-vars-content-id="08411dc8-65dd-4ab5-a36d-74767542a696" data-vars-headline="Illustration competitions grapple with generative AI" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.axios.com/2023/01/31/chatgpt-ai-arms-race-ethics-competition" target="_self">ethical </a>considerations have prompted some organizations to take a definitive <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="public stance" data-vars-click-url="https://societyillustrators.org/statement/" data-vars-content-id="08411dc8-65dd-4ab5-a36d-74767542a696" data-vars-headline="Illustration competitions grapple with generative AI" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://societyillustrators.org/statement/" target="_blank">public stance</a>.

From the Valley to D.C., Big Tech players like Facebook, Google and Amazon are under more scrutiny than ever as new technology develops and privacy and antitrust concerns grow in lockstep with companies’ ambitions.

Technology

Closer

Axios Closer

Data: Writers Guild of America; Chart: Rahul Mukherjee/Axios

Streaming's dominance of television viewership means more writers are beholden to the fluctuating schedules and budgets that come with working for digital-first platforms.

Why it matters: Previously predictable streams of income are now harder to find, and writers and showrunners are often working for less, according to the Writers Guild of America, one of the two unions on strike against the studios.

State of play: Half of TV series writers now work for streaming projects, the WGA says.

Median weekly writer-producer pay has fallen 23% over the last decade, according to its data.

And median weekly pay for showrunners on streaming shows is 46% lower than for those who work on broadcast shows.

What's happening: For one, platforms, including Netflix, Max and Hulu, tend to commission shorter seasons, with episode counts less than half of what's usually made for a traditional television network series. 

Streamers also have fluid release schedules, with companies like Netflix preferring to push an entire season online all at once, or producing shows with sometimes years-long gaps between seasons.

Meanwhile, on top of the smaller projects, writers are finding their traditional roles within them compartmentalized and diminished.

As outlined by Vox, streaming has increased the practice of "mini" writer rooms — featuring a smaller number of writers who are generally paid less than traditional writing rooms — to create episodes for shows before they are picked up for production.

The roles of writing and production — often combined —  are also now being separated.

The impact: Curtailed writing time means less compensation, less job security and fewer opportunities for career advancement for television writers, the WGA argues.

The intrigue: Showrunners are an exception to this trend.

They tend to work nearly the same number of weeks in both streaming and network TV, reflecting the actual amount of time needed to complete a series regardless of platform.

The WGA is also fighting to change the way residuals, another previously reliable source of income for creatives on popular shows, are calculated for streaming shows.

The other side: The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in May said it presented proposals including increases in compensation for writers as well as improvements in streaming residuals.

The AMPTP said at the time that the primary sticking points in negotiation were “mandatory staffing,” and “duration of employment” — "Guild proposals that would require a company to staff a show with a certain number of writers for a specified period of time, whether needed or not."

What we're watching: The studios appear to have no intention of giving in for several more months, Deadline has reported.

“I think we’re in for a long strike, and they’re going to let it bleed out,” one industry veteran, told Deadline.

Netflix grows subscribers amid password sharing crackdown

Striking numbers: Writers work less with streaming TV

Previously predictable streams of income are now harder to find, and writers and showrunners are often working more for less, the writers union argues.

Writers Guild of America (WGA)

<a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="Streaming&#x27;s dominance" data-vars-click-url="https://www.axios.com/2022/08/18/streaming-surpasses-cable-tv-market-share" data-vars-content-id="562e86b1-9e9d-40b4-b757-f769076087da" data-vars-headline="Striking numbers: Writers work less with streaming TV" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.axios.com/2022/08/18/streaming-surpasses-cable-tv-market-share" target="_self">Streaming&#x27;s dominance</a> of television viewership means more writers are beholden to the fluctuating schedules and budgets that come with working for digital-first platforms.Why it matters: Previously predictable streams of income are now harder to find, and writers and showrunners are often working for less, according to the Writers Guild of America, one of the two unions on strike against the studios.

After a record economic expansion, the coronavirus pandemic sent the U.S. economy into a recession as unemployment soared to staggering heights. The country now faces urgent questions about how much stimulus is needed for reeling consumers and businesses, and what a recovery might look like.

Economy & Business

Artificial intelligence has seeped into many creative trades — from urban planning to translations to painting. The latest: visualizations in journalism.

Why it matters: Computers are getting better at doing what humans can do, including creating art from scratch. But design is much more than mashing together some known shapes on top of a color background.

Artists interpret and convey abstract stories through a single image that not only has to grab someone's attention, but also stand the test of time.

Case in point: Brian Rumao, managing director at Next Play Ventures, posted a sample on Twitter using an AI image generation tool from Open AI called Dall-E 2 to try to reproduce a couple Axios visuals, to some success (see sample below).

The image on the center-left was created after inputting "a long black chain-link fence with barbed-wire dollar-signs on top, against a yellow background" into the tool, Rumao noted.

Screenshot of two tweets featuring Axios Visuals beside similar Dall-e composites 

The post generated a lot of internal discussion among the 23 visual journalists at Axios.

This led to the question: What is the difference between an editorial illustration developed by a human being and a visual composite generated by AI?

The big picture: Digital art generated from new AI systems like Midjourney and OpenAI's Dall-E 2 have prompted a lot of newsroom discussions, especially as the Dall-E 2 website explicitly mentions using the tool to generate newsletter art.

On the one hand: Machine-learning platforms can create photo composites from inputs to mimic fine art, photography or illustration. 

On the other hand: Editorial illustration requires a level of conceptualization, visual metaphor and story connection that these kinds of tools currently can't replicate. 

How it works: At Axios, illustrators begin by pinpointing key ideas from a story.

Next, they conceptualize visual representations of the themes.

Then they brainstorm how to tie the themes together to create a metaphor.

After producing several mockups, illustrators often select a version that's quickest to read — or one that's "reader first" — that conveys an idea at first glance.

An example: A story about two health care startups merging might prompt an illustrator to depict "digital," "health" and "merger" — the key elements of the story — using symbols that represent each. 

The final version might be two syringes tied together with an ethernet cable.

One issue is that AI technology can be prone to encoded biases. While people also are influenced by their biases, they can take steps to overcome these.

Editorial journalists are trained to consider these issues, and by encouraging conversations inside a diverse newsroom, they can see possible problematic interpretations of a visual.

People can also follow the evolution of language closely, and how those changes should be reflected visually. They can watch for tropes and guard against overused symbolism.

What to watch: For now, AI like Dall-E 2 is incapable of replicating the creative problem-solving process required to create successful editorial illustrations.

They are, however, turning out to be powerful tools to generate colors, ideas, patterns, textures, or mood boards for larger projects.

AI-generated digital art spurs debate about news illustrations

AI digital art may be improving — but hasn't replicated the creative problem-solving process needed for newsrooms.

Illustration of a artist's pallet with drops of paint in the shape of binary code 

Artificial intelligence has seeped into many creative trades — from<a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text=" urban planning" data-vars-click-url="https://www.axios.com/2022/08/03/artist-ai-dall-e-urban-design" data-vars-content-id="7f6026c1-80b2-4a8d-9b02-b5f34e9f8677" data-vars-headline="AI-generated digital art spurs debate about news illustrations" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.axios.com/2022/08/03/artist-ai-dall-e-urban-design" target="_self"> urban planning</a> to <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="translations" data-vars-click-url="https://www.axios.com/2022/07/06/facebook-ai-translator-200-languages" data-vars-content-id="7f6026c1-80b2-4a8d-9b02-b5f34e9f8677" data-vars-headline="AI-generated digital art spurs debate about news illustrations" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.axios.com/2022/07/06/facebook-ai-translator-200-languages" target="_self">translations</a> to <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="painting" data-vars-click-url="https://www.axios.com/2022/04/08/robotic-artist-ai-artificial-intelligence-artwork" data-vars-content-id="7f6026c1-80b2-4a8d-9b02-b5f34e9f8677" data-vars-headline="AI-generated digital art spurs debate about news illustrations" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.axios.com/2022/04/08/robotic-artist-ai-artificial-intelligence-artwork" target="_self">painting</a>. The latest: visualizations in journalism.Why it matters: Computers are getting better at doing what humans can do, including creating art from scratch. But design is much more than mashing together some known shapes on top of a color background.

Austin

Axios Austin

Data: Tim Renner via The Shadowlands; Note: Locations are approximate and anonymously reported; Map: Kavya Beheraj/Axios

"Unexplained noises or screams" — that's the most common category of hauntings, according to an index of nearly 11,000 entries of haunted locations in the United States collected and organized from reader submissions to the paranormal website The Shadowlands.

Why it matters: The Axios Visuals team thought it would be a fun Halloween treat for readers to dig into this data set of supposedly haunted places, looking at the types of haunting and which states have the most reported spooky experiences.

Zoom in: At Austin's Crockett High School "there is a little girl roaming the basement of the school ... in search of her family. At night by the big gym when teachers work late ... you can hear a little girl crying, walking up and down the hall."

Gazing at a third-floor painting of a girl with flowers at the Driskill Hotel has left some viewers with "a tingling sensation."

Doyle Hall at St. Ed's is "haunted by a nun ghost. She's nice though."

👻 Austin's haunted places

Doyle Hall at St. Edward's University is "Haunted by a nun ghost. She's nice though."

&quot;Unexplained noises or screams&quot; — that&#x27;s the most common category of hauntings, according to an index of nearly 11,000 entries of haunted locations in the United States collected and organized from reader submissions to the paranormal website <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="The Shadowlands" data-vars-click-url="http://theshadowlands.net/ghost/" data-vars-content-id="9b536b61-cefd-4d76-aa78-8efef5d0a70a" data-vars-headline="👻 Austin&#x27;s haunted places" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="http://theshadowlands.net/ghost/" target="_blank">The Shadowlands</a>.Why it matters: The Axios Visuals team thought it would be a fun Halloween treat for readers to dig into this data set of supposedly haunted places, looking at the types of haunting and which states have the most reported spooky experiences.

News

Things to Do

Data: Tim Renner via The Shadowlands; Note: Experiences were anonymously reported; Map: Kavya Beheraj/Axios

"Unexplained noises or screams" — that’s the most common category of hauntings in the U.S. And people out West are hearing a lot of them, according to an index of nearly 11,000 entries of haunted locations, collected and organized from reader submissions to the paranormal website The Shadowlands.

Why it matters: The Axios Visuals team thought it would be a fun Halloween treat for readers to dig into this dataset of supposedly haunted places, looking at the types of haunting and which states have the most reported spooky experiences.

Data: Tim Renner via The Shadowlands; Note: Reports could include multiple categories; Chart: Kavya Beheraj/Axios

Go deeper with more Axios holiday content:

Christmas reader survey: When is it acceptable to put up your Christmas tree?

Valentine's Day deep dive: The gamification of courtship

Thanksgiving inflation: Cost of turkey feast up 14%

These are the most haunted places in the U.S.

Wyoming and the Dakotas are super haunted.

Halloween

&quot;Unexplained noises or screams&quot; — that’s the most common category of hauntings in the U.S. And people out West are hearing a lot of them, according to an index of nearly 11,000 entries of haunted locations, collected and organized from reader submissions to the paranormal website <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="The Shadowlands" data-vars-click-url="http://theshadowlands.net/ghost/" data-vars-content-id="c110fcb0-d883-4d5f-abee-dbc1bf7128bb" data-vars-headline="These are the most haunted places in the U.S." data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="http://theshadowlands.net/ghost/" target="_blank">The Shadowlands</a>.Why it matters: The Axios Visuals team thought it would be a fun Halloween treat for readers to dig into this dataset of supposedly haunted places, looking at the types of haunting and which states have the most reported spooky experiences.

A look at the scientific breakthroughs changing the world, explorations in space and in worlds beyond our own and the threats posed to us by our own planet, both out of our control and of our own making.

Sarah Grillo

Stories

Striking numbers: Writers work less with streaming TV

Illustration competitions grapple with generative AI

👻 Austin's haunted places

These are the most haunted places in the U.S.

AI-generated digital art spurs debate about news illustrations