In the world of illustration, AI has very quickly transformed from a future existential risk to a set of products having a tangible impact on the industry\u2019s present.<\/p>\n
Its effects are being seen in the legal landscape of image licensing and usage, to the copyright implications inherent in new \u201cillustrator-friendly\u201d AI tools, to the fees that illustrators are able to charge for their work.<\/p>\n
And while many practitioners are now embracing the technology in their process in some form or another, others are more concerned than ever that AI poses a significant threat to the future of their craft.<\/p>\n
In 2024, a survey of the members of The Society of Authors<\/a> found that 26% of its illustrators had already lost work to AI. And 37% said that illustrated work had decreased in value due to the prevalence of Gen AI products.<\/p>\n In early 2025, in response to the UK Government\u2019s open consultation on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence<\/a>, the Association of Illustrators (AOI) surveyed its membership and found that over 32% of respondents had lost work to AI at an average of \u00a39,262 per affected artist.<\/p>\n It is, says Rachel Hill, CEO of the AOI, difficult to have a nuanced conversation about AI at the moment. But these figures make it impossible to argue that the tech isn\u2019t having a negative impact on the industry.<\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t mean the AOI is inherently anti-AI \u2013 you can read its detailed stance on the issue here<\/a>. It does, though, have no plans to allow AI-generated work to be submitted to the World Illustration Awards until there\u2019s a legal framework preventing the exploitation of illustrators\u2019 work in AI training.<\/p>\n Rather, Hill and her team are frustrated by the constant lack of transparency shown both by AI product providers, national governments and legislators around the world, which leaves clients, illustrators and agents all exposed to knotty legal issues.<\/p>\n For a body that seeks to represent, protect and advocate for the rights of the nation\u2019s illustrators, this is making the AOI\u2019s job more important than ever.<\/p>\n Karina Cao\u2019s piece for Digital Frontier<\/p>\n The same is true for agents representing commercial illustrators, whose whole approach to creating contracts and licensing agreements has been thrown into disarray due to ambiguity around AI.<\/p>\n \u201cAdobe has been building AI into a lot of their products,\u201d says Jeremy Wortsman, founder of the Jacky Winter Group<\/a>, an international illustration agency headquartered in Melbourne with offices in the UK and US.<\/p>\n As a result, \u201cWe\u2019ve had clients try to extend illustrated images or add extra animation frames to finished work. These things weren\u2019t within the licenses, and artists are getting really upset by clients mangling their work.\u201d<\/p>\n On the flipside, Wortsman has seen clients respond negatively to artists who have clearly used AI to create preliminary sketches for projects.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the same time, there\u2019s a huge amount of interest from clients wanting to commission artists to make custom models for them, just like clients wanted entire asset libraries 10 to 15 years ago.<\/p>\n \u201cBut now they want it on the scale of AI, which is essentially saying, \u2018We\u2019ll pay you a tonne of money so we can replicate your style as much as possible\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n This is the same promise on offer from \u201cillustrator-empowering\u201d off-the-shelf AI apps like Tess<\/a> and Exactly.AI<\/a>, which allow illustrators to train their own model exclusively on their own work.<\/p>\n In theory, this allows illustrators to generate unlimited images without any ethical concerns, but in fact, the legal issues are more complex.<\/p>\n \u201cSome people think this kind of work is the Holy Grail of branding projects right now,\u201d says Wortsman. \u201cBut the legal implications are so dicey and we\u2019re starting to see lawsuits, like the Anthropic one<\/a>,\u201d in which the AI company was forced to pay $1.5billion to settle authors\u2019 claims it had pirated their work to train chatbots.<\/p>\n For Wortsman, it\u2019s a headache because his role is to make money for his artists.<\/p>\n \u201cWe represent artists with different approaches and opinions on AI,\u201d he says. \u201cThe challenge of running an agency is that you can\u2019t impose your own morals, and I really want to leave it to our artists to decide. We don\u2019t want to shut down any opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n One of Charlotte Cripps\u2019 pieces for Digital Frontier<\/p>\n To this end, Wortsman has spent the past few weeks co-authoring an agency-wide AI policy to clarify the group\u2019s position to illustrators and clients alike.<\/p>\n It guarantees that all final work will be human-made. In return, they expect their clients:<\/p>\n To respect the rights of their artists, as outlined in their contracts, and not to use in-built AI functionality in tools to alter and amend work. Wortsman expects to amend this policy on a quarterly basis to allow for the rapid pace of change in AI tech.<\/p>\n By the time he makes the next update, the UK government may have finally decided on a course of action following its Copyright and Artificial Intelligence consultation. But Hill doesn\u2019t believe legislators are in a rush to make a decision.<\/p>\n Following on from its survey, the AOI has been proactive in joining the Creators Right Alliance<\/a> and the British Copyright Council<\/a> in pushing back forcefully on the UK government\u2019s proposals to exempt AI development companies from existing copyright laws. This would allow them to scrape any online visuals, unless creatives opt their work out on an image-by-image basis.<\/p>\n Over 92% of UK illustrators say that opting out of training datasets would seriously harm their business by reducing their discoverability online.<\/p>\n Currently, illustrators are reliant on publishing large numbers of their images to the web to attract business, making opting each image out of training a logistical impossibility.<\/p>\n \u201cThe government\u2019s closeness to a few big names in tech is influencing their decision-making,\u201d says Hill. \u201cSo creators have really come together in force to oppose that.\u201d<\/p>\n Not all of them of course.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s like the big juggernaut trying to stamp on people\u2019s creative abilities,\u201d says designer, illustrator and art director, Charlotte Cripps. \u201cI think it\u2019s important to embrace it, otherwise you\u2019re just going to be left behind.\u201d<\/p>\n Until recently, Cripps was design director of Digital Frontier<\/em><\/a>, a UK-based platform that explored the intersection between technology, business and society.<\/p>\n Until she landed the role, she had no experience at all with AI, but over the last two years has honed her skills across Midjourney, Runway, Flora and others, to produce illustrations and animations that won the publication a loyal following and various industry awards for its rich visuals.<\/p>\n During that time, Cripps says that AI allowed her to produce imagery in a way that kept pace with a relentless online publishing schedule, while allowing her to be more experimental and tangential with her creative thinking.<\/p>\n One of Charlotte Cripps\u2019 pieces for Digital Frontier<\/p>\n She is, however, keen to stress that none of the illustrations she produced at Digital Frontier<\/em> were just made with AI. Rather, AI formed part of her process, with final images developed and finished with human input \u2013 and she always commissioned actual illustrators for the print magazine.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve got to see it as something that can aid you to propel yourself further and set yourself apart from everyone else doing the same trade,\u201d she says. \u201cIf you don\u2019t, you\u2019ll find people will be able to generate work much faster than you.\u201d<\/p>\n Now that she\u2019s left Digital Frontier<\/em> to go freelance, she says clients are approaching her specifically for her ability to amplify her design and illustration abilities with new AI skills.<\/p>\n This has not been the case for another UK-based illustrator, Matt Blease<\/a>, whose hand-drawn work has recently been used to promote IBM\u2019s latest AI tools.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve just finished a big campaign for IBM where they used a real illustrator and a real frame-by-frame animation studio to create beautiful animations to advertise their AI products. And that did all feel a bit odd.\u201d<\/p>\n Unlike Cripps, Blease is unconvinced by the value of AI for image-makers. \u201cIt\u2019s reassuringly shit,\u201d he says, smiling. \u201cWhen I\u2019ve been struggling for a concept or something and I\u2019ve gone to ChatGPT, the ideas have just felt so basic.\u201d<\/p>\n As a result, he neither feels threatened by AI \u2013 \u201cI\u2019m still insanely busy\u201d \u2013 nor compelled to use it to stay competitive. But he is frustrated by the way it\u2019s exacerbating an already messy problem in the industry \u2013 plagiarism.<\/p>\n Blease reports seeing his work plagiarised on an increasingly regular basis since the arrival of AI-powered image generation, compounding an already significant industry trend towards designers expecting illustration to be free.<\/p>\n In fact, he readily admits to having been part of the problem in the early days of his career.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was a graphic designer commissioning illustrators, if there wasn\u2019t a budget for imagery, then my senior designers would come to me because they knew that I could draw. I\u2019d adapt my drawing to someone\u2019s signature style and it would go on a billboard somewhere. I was basically AI.\u201d<\/p>\n Wortsman agrees that AI itself is not the issue, but as a tool it amplifies a lot of existing negative practices across the creative industries. And it\u2019s making life harder for many people, forced to balance competing pressures.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I use chat GPT now for anything, there\u2019s an environmental cost, there is an ethical cost, but I\u2019m also able to serve my artists better, because I\u2019m able to work faster or communicate better,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cBut the original sin of AI is that there\u2019s no way to use it ethically right now, because any data set that you intersect with is using compromised information. You have no idea where these images have been scraped from, and there\u2019s just no way that you can use it commercially.<\/p>\n \u201cLife now just requires endless trolley problems in every aspect of our life. We always have to ask, \u2018What\u2019s the least-worst thing we can do\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\nA frustrating lack of transparency<\/h5>\n
New questions for agents<\/h5>\n
A clear AI policy<\/h5>\n
\nIf an illustrator uses AI during any part of the process it will be discussed with the client beforehand, and the specifics of that usage clearly disclosed.
\nThe agency will consider all AI usage on a case-by-case basis, so as not to close down any work with clients interested in exploring its use.<\/p>\n
\nThat final images are not used for any unauthorised training of AI models and are not uploaded to platforms where they\u2019re likely to be scraped.
\nThey agree to notify both agency and artist before using any form of AI in the project workflow.<\/p>\nAI enthusiasm<\/h5>\n
\u201cReassuringly shit\u201d<\/h5>\n