A cartoonist using AI—but not to make art
Plus a diary comic about feelings related to AI
How I feel about AI:
I’m nervous even writing about AI since so much of the art and comics community is quite vocal about hating AI. And I understand that—I am very aware of the negative parts of AI. The biggest ones that concern me are:
The environmental impact
Theft of art and writing without creators’ permission
Devaluing creative labor
At the same time, I’m excited by how powerful the technology is, and I want to share how I’m using it to save time in my workday as a cartoonist. Note that for all these things below, I don’t just use what AI gives me—rather, my use of AI is helping me more quickly get to my ultimate goal. In the end, I almost always tinker with AI’s suggestions.
AI for Summarization:
Summarization and organization is really where I’m seeing AI excel.
I use voice-to-text in Chat GPT where I speak into it and then have it summarize content for me. This saves me a ton of time when I’m trying to summarize a class or write a long email. It even helps if I’m trying to better understand the concept I’m putting together for this newsletter. I’ve learned that I think better speaking than writing so this method is especially useful to me.
Rewording: Chat GPT does a good job helping me reword emails or parts of posts that might be a little clunky. I can spend WAY too long on wording and I find AI does a great job offering clearer and friendlier ways to say things.
Ways I use AI for story help in my graphic novel :
Dialogue: For example, I have a character in my middle grade graphic novel that I decided to make speak like an 19th century sailor. I put his modern day lines into ChatGPT and it gave them back to me with various options of ways to say it with nautical slang. I doubt it’s historically accurate, but for my story it doesn’t really matter. And even though I still end up altering what AI gives me, it saves me a lot of time.
Idea brainstorming: I’m writing a book that includes a treasure hunt. I’ll use AI to help generate ideas of types of treasure hunt adventures that frequently occur in middle grade books. It helps me consider ideas I may have forgotten.
Being asked questions: I tend to get stuck in my own head and circle around a topic for a long time, so I ask ChatGPT to ask me questions about a scene or theme. I don’t want AI to come up with the answers—that’s the fun part—but I do want help getting out of my own head. I’m surprised with how good some of the questions are.
Please note that none of these methods are actually making art. I’ve tried using image generation, but I don’t particularly like much of the art that is created using AI (it often feels without a soul to me), the ethical implications bother me, and it’s faster and way more fun for me to draw than have AI generate art.
What about you?
How do you feel about AI? How do you use it in your life (if at all)?
AI & Comics Workshop
I attended a fantastic workshop that my friend and fellow cartoonist Susannah Hainley hosted with Sequential Artists Workshop. I highly recommend it! This is a recorded version of it:
Susannah covers a lot more than I do here including the legal ramifications of AI, protecting your art and IP from being used for training, how AI works, guided experiments with it, and more.
Other AI resource
In the comics space, check out
where she writes about Cartooning in the Age of AI, “believing AI to be a mix of good and really, really bad.”I also gain a lot of valuable AI insights by following Allie K. Miller, a former colleague who has become a leading voice in AI. She recently co-hosted an excellent Masterclass on AI and productivity, which I highly recommend.
Coaching
I sent out a Black Friday email with a variety of limited time discounts on my work. I’m also offering a new 3 Flexible Hours Comics Coaching Package which is currently on sale, along with my monthly coaching. Accelerate your comics practice with personalized feedback!
Leif Love
Leif perfectly reflecting how many people feel about AI:
Take care and keep creating!
-Katharine
I use AI in all the ways you do. I never thought about having it ask me a series of questions. I’ll have to try that out.
The best use of it I’ve found recently is not art related. I had it create a resume for me. Since there is enough information about me out there, there was enough to grab that it did exactly what I needed it to and phrased it well.
I use photos from Google Maps.