The San Diego Comic Con has quietly updated its policy to ban AI-generated art, 404 Media reports, providing a major victory to artists.
The about-face is a welcome surprise. Until now, the massive convention — which has become a melting pot of all kinds of pop entertainment beyond the comic medium, with everyone ranging from game developers to movie studios using it as a platform to tease new content — has allowed some AI art to be displayed, so long as it was labeled as such and wasn’t for sale, as well as other stipulations that have been in place since at least 2024, according to 404.
In an interview with 404, Karla Ortiz, an artist who’s worked with major studios that attend Comic Con, called the decision a “relief.”
“Generative AI is still going to creep its nasty way in some way or another,” she said, “but at least it’s not something we have to take lying down. It’s something we can actively speak out against.”
Artists have been hostile towards AI pretty much from the moment it became popular, as the models were trained on troves of photos and artworks ripped from the internet without permission or compensation.
But this past year saw a particularly notable surge in anti-AI sentiment, which now seems to have finally reached a boiling point in the Comic Con community.
When the convention posted its latest rules for its upcoming Art Show this July, artists and fans on social media blasted it for allowing AI images. Ortiz was among the vocal critics.
“Comic-[C]on deciding to allow GenAI imagery in the art show — giving valuable space to GenAI users to show slop right NEXT to actual artists who worked their asses off to be there—is a disgrace!” she wrote in a post highlighted by 404.
Strikingly, less than a day after the AI backlash started, the convention quietly updated its policy: “Material created by Artificial Intelligence (AI) either partially or wholly, is not allowed in the art show,” it now reads. It’s seemingly keeping its cards close to its chest, as it made no announcement about the policy change.
The decision isn’t the only sign of resistance to AI in the world of comics and fandoms. President of DC Comics Jim Lee vowed to uphold human creativity and not support AI: “Not now, not ever,” Lee said last October. In August, another fandom convention, GalaxyCon, instituted a “sweeping AI art ban,” with its president saying it would “fight against unethical AI companies.” The following month, a vendor accused of selling AI art at Dragon Con was shown out by cops after organizers, with onlookers’ approval, demanded that the vendor leave.
Now, Comic Con’s reversal on the issue represents one of the biggest and most consequential shifts in the comic and fandom worlds, and seems to be part of a much greater turning tide sweeping across the entertainment landscape. Last week, musicians rejoiced when Bandcamp, a major music distribution platform favored by indie artists, also instituted an AI ban, prohibiting any songs that generated “wholly or in substantial part by AI.”