A Long Screed About AI Art, by Matthew Inman (theoatmeal.com)

Cartoonist Matthew Inman (The Oatmeal) published a lengthy comic titled "A Long Screed About AI Art" that uses his trademark humor and illustration to engage with the cultural conversation around AI-generated imagery. The page presents itself plainly — "This is a comic about AI art" — and includes a note from the author plus credits (Netflix background art by Megan Willoughby) and thanks to collaborators. Given Inman’s profile (Eisner Award winner, New York Times bestselling author, co-creator of several games, and a 2024 Netflix series creator), the strip amplifies public engagement with the topic by bringing a mainstream, visually driven critique to a broad audience. For the AI/ML community the piece is notable less for technical novelty than for its cultural impact: it highlights how artists and the general public perceive AI art and spotlights the ethical, legal and creative tensions that accompany model-driven imagery. While the comic itself is a satirical commentary rather than a technical paper, it underscores practical issues AI practitioners must reckon with — dataset provenance and consent, attribution and licensing, fidelity versus human craft, and clear communication about how models were trained and deployed. In short, Inman’s screed is a reminder that technical choices in training and release policies have real cultural consequences and that engaging artists and the public is essential.