Your article about AI doesn’t need AI art

The Verge / 4/12/2026

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The New Yorker’s Sam Altman profile uses an illustration created by artist David Szauder that includes a “Generated using A.I.” disclosure, sparking unease about how generative AI is being presented in editorial art.
The piece depicts Altman with multiple “alt” face variations created around his head, culminating in a visual that the article describes as intentionally unsettling.
Szauder is positioned as a mixed-media artist whose practice predates mainstream commercial AI tools, highlighting a distinction between longer-running generative/collage workflows and newer AI tool usage.
The overall argument is that AI art isn’t necessary for articles about AI—traditional illustration and non-AI-driven creative approaches can still convey the message without triggering illustrator concerns.
The article frames this as a broader signal about evolving norms for disclosure, authorship, and audience expectations in AI-assisted visual media.

Collage of David Szauder’s New Yorker Sam Altman illustration edited to look like its melting.

The illustration for The New Yorker's profile of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is a jump scare. Altman stands in a blue sweater with a blank expression. Around his head hovers a cluster of disembodied faces - creepy alt-Altmans, their expressions ranging from anger to open-mouthed woe. Some barely look like Altman. One final face rests in his hands. And at the bottom, there's a disclosure that might spook many illustrators far more: "Visual by David Szauder; Generated using A.I."

Szauder is a mixed-media artist who has been working with collage, video, and generative art processes that predate commercial AI tools for over a decade, and was recently …

Read the full story at The Verge.