New Yorker Uses AI Art for Sam Altman Profile
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- The New Yorker illustrated its profile of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (written by Ronan Farrow) with an AI-generated image by David Szauder, credited at the bottom as "Visual by David Szauder; Generated using A.I."
- The illustration depicts Altman in a blue sweater surrounded by disembodied faces meant to convey his untrustworthiness, though The Verge's art team found the AI aesthetic a "dead giveaway" that gave the piece a "sickly but slightly boring vibe."
- Szauder told The Verge his process combined classical Photoshop editing with AI-based editing, sending around 15 sketches to senior art director Supriya Kalidas; he programs his own AI tools and uses "ethically clarified source materials" drawn from archival imagery.
- The US Copyright Office has ruled that purely prompt-based AI images cannot be copyrighted because "the final output reflects the user's acceptance of the AI system's interpretation, rather than authorship of the expression it contains."
- The Verge maintains a strict disclosure policy for AI imagery, including yellow labels and explicit justification, while disclosing that its parent Vox Media has a content-licensing agreement with OpenAI—Altman's company.
- The New Yorker has previously commissioned Szauder for AI-animated illustrations, and the publication's digital design director Aviva Michaelov confirmed the roughly 15-sketch iteration process for the Altman piece.
Why it matters: For freelance illustrators facing art budgets that are "the first belt tightened" at editorial publications and rates "in a race to the bottom," The New Yorker's adoption of AI-generated editorial art—however disclosed and however artistically involved—moves a prestige publication further toward normalizing generative tools in the field. The US Copyright Office's rule that prompt-only AI images cannot be copyrighted draws the clearest legal boundary yet on where human authorship ends.
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