Readers of the satirical publication The Onion noticed something surprising today: it had used an AI-generated picture on a new article, despite the paper’s CEO Ben Collins recently promising that “we don’t use AI.” The image of a lizard-like, humanoid face accompanied an article titled “Monster Devastated To See Film Depicting Things He Told Guillermo Del Toro In Confidence.” “Come on man, not the AI art,” one Bluesky user who spotted the image wrote in a post, highlighting a growing dissent against publications moving away from paying human artists and using lazily AI-generated illustrations instead. Creators have long argued that the tech not only marks the death of originality, but cheapens human creativity and undermines the livelihoods of artists. A number of copyright infringement lawsuits involving AI art are currently working their way through the courts. In the case of the Onion, though, it sounds like an innocent mistake — and one the acclaimed publication quickly worked to rectify. “Hi! Quick note,” Collins wrote on Bluesky, minutes after news of the AI image started to spread. “The Onion accidentally posted a stock photo from a vendor with an AI-generated image in it.” Indeed, the image is being sold by the stock image website Shutterstock, which lists it as being “generated by an Artificial Intelligence system.” The face was superimposed onto a separate image of a living room and used to illustrate the article. “We pulled the post down once we found that out,” Collins added. “Our commitment to not using AI…The Onion Deletes Image From Article After Realizing It Was AI-Generated