Artist sues AI meme generator for selling deeply personal comic as ad template

Artist Elmer Saflor, who goes by the online handle “Superelmer,” loves that millions of people have shared his “Running Away Balloon” comic since it became a popular meme in 2017. However, just because lots of people have copied it, that doesn’t mean it’s OK for an AI meme generator to commercialize his copyrighted meme as a template for who knows how many ads, he told Ars. That’s why he’s fighting to stop one of the biggest meme generators currently leveraging AI to rapidly scale the allegedly