ChatGPT Signed a Real Artist's Name. Check Your AI Pictures Before You Post Them.
AI image tools can slip a real person's signature, a logo or a look-alike into a flyer. A two-minute check before anything goes out keeps that off your storefront.
By John Martines · October 14, 2026 · 6 min
ChatGPT was caught putting real New Yorker cartoonists' signatures on cartoons they never drew. If your team makes flyers, posts or mockups with AI, here is the short check to run before anything is published.
The office manager at a landscaping company needs a fall flyer by Friday. She asks ChatGPT for "a friendly cartoon of a family raking leaves, in the style of a magazine cartoon." It looks great. She drops it into the flyer, prints 500 copies and posts it on the company's Facebook page.
Nobody notices the small scribble in the bottom corner. It is a real cartoonist's signature, on a drawing that cartoonist never made.
That is not a made-up risk. On October 5, 2026, Nieman Lab reported that ChatGPT had been putting the signatures of real New Yorker cartoonists on cartoons it generated. The reporter counted more than 15 cartoonists whose signatures showed up without their permission. One of them, Brendan Loper, found out when people wrote to ask whether a viral cartoon was his. It wasn't.
An AI image tool learns from huge numbers of existing pictures. Ask it for "a magazine cartoon" and it gives you what magazine cartoons usually look like. Sometimes that includes the details that usually sit on them: a signature, a logo, a watermark, a familiar character, or a face that looks a lot like someone real.
The tool isn't trying to copy anyone. It just doesn't know that a signature means "this person made this." So the picture can arrive with someone else's name on it, and the person who asked for it may never look closely enough to see it.
When that picture goes on your flyer, your website or your social page, it goes out under your business's name. The tool doesn't carry the blame. You do.
How it got here:
- February 2024: OpenAI began adding Content Credentials, a hidden label that records which tool made a picture, to images made with ChatGPT and its image tools. Most social sites strip that label when you upload, and a screenshot removes it too.
- January 29, 2025: The US Copyright Office said that writing a prompt, even a detailed one, does not make you the author of what the AI produces. A picture made only from a prompt generally can't be copyrighted by you. Your own changes and arrangement can be.
- October 5, 2026: Nieman Lab reported real cartoonists' signatures on ChatGPT cartoons. After it asked OpenAI about it, coverage says ChatGPT began showing a warning about similarity to other people's work in some cases, but signatures kept turning up in later tests.
- October 5, 2026: OpenAI announced it will test labeled ads next to the pictures people make in ChatGPT, starting later in October, in the US, on its free and low-cost plans.
Most small businesses now make at least some pictures with AI: a social post, a flyer, a mockup of a new sign, a holiday card. That's a good use. It's fast and cheap. But three things make it riskier than it looks.
Your name is on it. A customer, a competitor or the artist doesn't see "ChatGPT made this." They see your logo next to someone else's signature, or a character that belongs to a movie studio, or a face that looks like a local celebrity.
You may not own it. If the picture came straight from a prompt, you probably can't stop a competitor from using the same picture. That matters for a logo or a mascot you plan to use for years. It matters much less for a one-time post.
Free accounts are getting busier. The person making your flyer on a free ChatGPT account will soon see ads next to the picture. That's not a danger by itself, but it is one more reason company work belongs in a company account. Our piece [Free AI Can Now Make Your Proposals. Keep Them in a Company Account.](/articles/company-work-company-accounts) covers that decision.
1. Find out who makes pictures. Ask the team one question this week: "Who uses AI to make images for us, and where?" You'll often find two or three people, each on their own free account. Write down the names and the tools.
A free account opens the rest of this article and the whole library.