Artificial intelligence in editorial illustration: an insight into proximity and plausibility; emotion, empathy and ethics

The discipline of editorial illustration from commission, through production and into publication is perceived as being under threat from artificial intelligence (AI). Cosmopolitan magazine launched its AI issue in June 2022 with the headline, ‘Meet the World’s First Artificially Intelligent Magazine Cover’ with the subheading, ‘And it only took 20 seconds to make’. In a swiftly moving technological shift that seeks to revolutionize task-based work, are editorial illustrators in danger of losing out to machine-based learning algorithms because copyright law considers originality as an embodiment of the author’s personality [1]? Do publishers of periodicals such as newspapers, magazines and journals see opportunities to radically alter and potentially streamline their pre-production models of content handling by removing creators from the pressurized publication cycle? Are we seeing the final nail in the coffin of editorial illustration as a worthy and noble pursuit that has been a cornerstone for the accountability and transparency of curated content in print and digital editions? This paper considers issues of plausibility and proximity of editorial illustration in relation to the creative experience for commissioners and makers, arguing that human presence at every step of the process is vital to the way that communicative content is constructed, received and digested in periodical publishing. The authors further consider how readers emotive responses to published content risk being undermined by the over-reliance on AI technologies, losing opportunities for empathetic responses to published editorial content and highlighting potential ethical issues including assumed racial and gender bias, and inbuilt prejudices formed from the origination and development of some AI interfaces by developers.