San Diego Comic-Con quietly bans A.I. art after artist backlash
Artworks made with A.I. were previously allowed at San Diego Comic-Con's Art Show in 2024 and 2025.
Science and Technology
San Diego Comic-Con, which allowed art made with artificial intelligence at its separate art show event in previous years, has quietly reversed course after backlash from artists.
In both the 2024 and 2025 editions, organizers said artwork made with A.I. could be placed in the art show only if labeled as “Not-For-Sale.”
“It must be clearly marked as A.I.-produced, not simply listed as a print,” organizers had said, according to archived versions of its website.
If the prompt that created the artwork included directions to generate it based on the style of another artist, organizers had said that must be included in the description.
Now, the convention’s website has been updated with a new policy that bans all artwork made with A.I. from the art show, a free event open to the public that runs concurrently with San Diego Comic-Con from July 23-26.
“Material created by Artificial Intelligence (AI) either partially or wholly, is not allowed in the art show,” the policy reads. “If there are questions, the Art Show Coordinator will be the sole judge of acceptability.”
The change was first reported by Culture Crave. It came after artists expressed anger at the policy ahead of the 2026 Comic-Con Art Show.
Karla Ortiz, an illustrator and concept artist who has worked on several films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, called the earlier policy allowing A.I.-generated artwork a “disgrace.”
Ortiz said Comic-Con should celebrate and elevate “the actual craftsmen and women” whose work is central to fan culture, arguing that allowing A.I.-generated imagery “opens the door to slop that can only exist due to the stolen work of those same creatives.”
The artist is also one of the plaintiffs in a federal class-action lawsuit against Midjourney, DeviantArt and Stability AI, alleging that generative A.I. systems were trained on copyrighted artwork without artists’ consent.
The lawsuit, filed in 2023, is ongoing. Court records reviewed by Urgent Matter show the plaintiffs recently asked for permission to file a third amended complaint as the case moves deeper into discovery, where disputes have centered on access to training datasets and internal technical records.
The case is among the most closely watched legal challenges testing how generative A.I. companies source and use creative material.
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