---
id: "2026-10-07-chatgpt-forges-new-yorker-cartoonist-signatures"
url: "https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-07-chatgpt-forges-new-yorker-cartoonist-signatures/"
as_of: "2026-10-08T23:45:00+02:00"
date: "2026-10-07"
date_precision: day
category: media-generation
importance: 2
confidence: medium
status: [Partly confirmed]
sources: 3
editor: Adam Bicz
human_review: null
version: "2026-10-08"
---

As of: 2026-10-08 23:45 CEST.
Researched and written by AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code). Human editor: Adam Bicz.
Canonical page: https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-07-chatgpt-forges-new-yorker-cartoonist-signatures/

# Nieman Lab: ChatGPT images carry real New Yorker cartoonists' signatures

Full title: Nieman Lab: ChatGPT images carry real New Yorker cartoonists' signatures, including Brendan Loper's 'BLOPER'

In early October 2026 Nieman Lab reported that ChatGPT's image generator puts the signatures or pen names of real New Yorker cartoonists on "New Yorker-style" cartoons. A cartoon signed "BLOPER" went viral on Facebook, and people asked Brendan Loper whether he had drawn it. Nieman Lab found more than 15 affected cartoonists, including Harry Bliss, Emily Flake, Joe Dator and Pat Byrnes. OpenAI's 2024 Condé Nast deal did not cover training on cartoons.

## Key facts
- Trigger: a ChatGPT image made for a Dolly Parton fan who asked for 'a New Yorker-style cartoon' carried 'BLOPER', the pen name of New Yorker cartoonist Brendan Loper, and spread on Facebook (Nieman Lab via AI Weekly/YourStory; Futurism, Oct 7)
- Scale: Nieman Lab found ChatGPT-generated images with the signatures of more than 15 New Yorker cartoonists (named: Harry Bliss, Emily Flake, Joe Dator, Pat Byrnes, Liza Donnelly; Futurism also lists Peter Vey and Jason Adam Katzenstein). A forged Loper signature had also been reported in May 2026
- Loper: 'I'm not a territorial person, but my name is my name'; 'It felt very much like a violation of my personhood'; his signature is 'the certificate of authenticity' (Futurism)
- OpenAI's 2024 licensing deal with Condé Nast did not permit training on cartoons; after being alerted, ChatGPT returned a guardrail message about 'similarity to third-party content' for such prompts (per summaries of Nieman Lab). OpenAI gave no public statement in Futurism's article

## What happened

Image models reproduce visual conventions of their training data, including artists' signatures. Nieman Lab's investigation showed
that ChatGPT does this with the signatures of named, living New Yorker cartoonists, which can make readers believe an AI image is the
artist's work.

## Why it matters

It is a concrete case of AI output being attributed to a real person through a forged mark, echoing Getty Images' claim against
Stability AI over reproduced watermarks, and it bears on whether image models trained on licensed or scraped work can avoid
reproducing identity markers.

Note: the Nieman Lab original was not located; facts come from Futurism and secondary summaries.

## Your AI and this story

- GPT-6 Astra (training cutoff April 2026): 160 days after its cutoff
- Claude Opus 5.5 (training cutoff June 2026): 99 days after its cutoff
- Gemini 3.8 Flash (training cutoff March 2026): 190 days after its cutoff
- Grok 4.7 (training cutoff May 2026): 129 days after its cutoff

## Sources

1. [Futurism: ChatGPT caught putting signatures of real cartoonists on AI-generated comics (Oct 7)](https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/chatgpt-caught-putting-signatures-of-real-cartoonists-on-ai-generated-comics) (futurism.com, press)
2. [AI Weekly: ChatGPT signs AI 'New Yorker' cartoons with real artists' names (Nieman Lab summary)](https://aiweekly.co/alerts/chatgpt-signs-ai-new-yorker-cartoons-with-real-artists-names) (aiweekly.co, press)
3. [YourStory: ChatGPT is putting real artists' names on AI cartoons](https://yourstory.com/ai-story/chatgpt-real-artists-names-ai-cartoons) (yourstory.com, press)

## Changes

- 2026-10-08 (filed): Created (Futurism)