Following on from last time's discussion of AI artwork in comics, there is the question of copyright. US law allows AI-generated art to be copyrighted if it involved a significant input from human beings. I don't know what they're going to do when we have AGI, but that's going to be a legal headache across the board.
It doesn't necessarily matter anyway if you're not able to claim copyright in your comic book's art. The text will be your copyright, so nobody can republish your story as is. I guess they could strip out the text and come up with a new story to go with the images, the way Eric Thompson wrote The Magic Roundabout, but if the underlying material is at all original that wouldn't be easy. (And in any case, what writer worth their salt would want to wear another's clothes that way?)
Certainly the way I envisage using AI art there'd need to be a lot of human input. As prompts I'd be using not only text but my own thumbnail panel layouts and Leo's rough pencils. How we make a comic is quite an involved process. All the AI would be handling is the embellishments: the inks, flats and final colouring that are fairly arduous work for the artist.
Writer Steve Coulson is way ahead of where I thought the technology was now. He's already producing a range of comic books using art by Midjourney. You can download them and take a look. Midjourney hasn't got anything like the charm of Leo's art, as you can see from the quite similar scene below from Mirabilis season 2. But while AI artwork wouldn't yet do for Mirabilis, it's already fine for something like B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth. Watch this space.
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