Today, I did something different on "Draw Me Anything" — I pitted my human sketching skills against the mighty ChatGPT 4o. Me versus the machine that has apparently digested the work (and employment opportunities) of every human artist who ever picked up a pencil or stylus.
Would twenty-odd years of professional cartooning stand a chance against an algorithm that's supposedly going to replace us all?
The challenge was simple: I took your drawing requests and raced against ChatGPT to complete them. For each prompt, I punched the exact same request into ChatGPT, then we both drew simultaneously. Dog poop, vintage jukeboxes, dragons, human flies, pencils on romantic dates — we covered quite the artistic spectrum.
I don't want to spoil the results, but I kept finding myself finishing drawings while staring at ChatGPT's little "still generating" animation. Turns out there might be some life in this old dog yet…
As I mentioned during the stream, I've been thinking a lot about what
calls "aliveness" in creative work. There's something uniquely human about art made by, well... humans. Even when AI produces technically impressive results, there's often a deadness to it once you know it's machine-made.The full video of this AI vs. artist showdown is available for paid subscribers above. If you're curious to see whether I beat the robot (and by how much), or just want to watch me frantically draw a horse riding a bike while playing a French horn, consider upgrading to a paid subscription.
Speaking of future episodes, I've got some fantastic Substack Lives lined up:
- , recent Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist
- from (Add to calendar)
- from
- (who I'll be joining on his Substack live next Tuesday at noon)
…and more!
Thanks to everyone who tuned in and submitted ‘prompts’. I'm not even tired.
‘til next time,
Your pal,
Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppa__7ZLAU8
Hahaha. Perfect response. 👌
please don't die trying to beat the robots though