Pursuing ‘Joe-Ness’

A cartoonist tests whether AI can expand his drawings without sacrificing his unique style

By Joe Dworetzky • Bay City News

August 2, 2026

IN MARCH OF 2024 I wrote a story for Bay City News Foundation that considered whether I could land a cartoon in The New Yorker if I used generative AI to enhance the limited drawing skills that I brought to my cartooning. The question was rhetorical, but I used it to explore whether I should outsource the work of illustrating my cartoons to AI.

I evaluated the pros and cons and did my best to make the case for using the technology. But despite my genuine desire to level up my cartooning, there were serious problems with the way the AI models had been trained on other people’s work. The images it produced had been copyright-laundered but using them still felt cheap and vaguely sleazy. I concluded that I wouldn’t be using AI generated images in my work, unless there was a clear reason for doing so, like where the technology was part of the story.

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Joe Dworetzky is a second career journalist. He practiced law in Philadelphia for more than 35 years, representing private and governmental clients in commercial litigation and insolvency proceedings. Joe served as City Solicitor for the City of Philadelphia under Mayor Ed Rendell and from 2009 to 2013 was one of five members of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission with responsibility for managing the city’s 250 public schools. He moved to San Francisco in 2011 and began writing fiction and pursuing a lifelong interest in editorial cartooning. Joe earned a Master’s in Journalism from Stanford University in 2020. He covers Legal Affairs and writes long form Investigative stories. His occasional cartooning can be seen in Bay Area Sketchbook. Joe encourages readers to email him story ideas and leads at joe.dworetzky@baycitynews.com.