(Photo Credit: Lumenor AI gallery results via Google for AI-Batman. Gen AI was not used to capture this photo.)
I was stranded at the auto body repair shop in the middle of New Jersey, waiting to find out what was wrong with my car. The machine had been giving me trouble for weeks; warning lights etched upon the dashboard lit like a Christmas tree. They told me they’d need to keep it overnight. Called in the office gofer, a young man barely in his 20s, to drive me home.
He greeted me with that dead-eyed cheer they train you to have when you’re new to the world of customer service and haven’t yet learned how to fake a sick day. Then he left and pulled up from around back in a black sedan that reeked of new car smell and hints of vanilla vape residue. I figured it’d be a quiet drive—ten or so minutes of awkward small talk.
Instead, he chose to take the long way home. No GPS, because he self-assuredly ‘knew the way into town’. That’s when it happened, and the audio dashboard resumed playing.
A familiar voice. Soft baritone. Resonant yet calm. It was the voice of a man whom I’d been listening to almost my entire life. Hooked into the car’s speakers was a phone playing a video of… AI-Batman.
I sat there, blinking, as a heartfelt monologue about trauma and personal growth was being delivered through a Gen-AI voice mod. Here he was, Kevin Conroy, the voice of Batman of a generation, back from the dead, being forced into speaking like a licensed therapist via an AI-voice filter.
The driver didn’t catch the weirdness of it all, nodding along to Batman-Freud’s talk about loneliness. Listening to this, it felt… wrong. Not because Kevin couldn’t be a voice of hope, as the man was the voice of Batman for so long, inspiring many millennial kids such as myself for generations, I just don’t think anyone asked Kevin’s permission for this.
I looked at the driver, who had the quiet intensity of someone either deep in thought or someone very much online. I asked him, gently, if he was okay. For context, I’d spent years working in the mental health field before jumping into journalism. I’ve sat with people through panic attacks, depressive spirals, nights they didn’t want to survive. Whatever the reason for this Bat-dependency, I was ready to talk about it…
He said that he felt alienated and ostracized. Bullied for being… a straight white man (this was before 2025, mind you). That, in his high school, of which he’d only recently graduated, his class made him feel very unwelcome for not being “queer enough.” Said he wished there were more “safe spaces… for men who hooked up with girls.”
The Andrew Tate-shaped face gears started clanking into shape in my head regarding the kind of person this was. What got to me wasn’t what he said, but rather, who it was that he turned to for comfort. Batman, or, more accurately, someone using Kevin Conroy’s AI-scrubbed voice.
Which is when I asked:
“So… why Batman? Did you read the Batman comics?” I asked.
“No.”
“Watched the animated series? Hell, do you even know who Kevin Conroy is? The voice of Batman for an entire generation?”
The kid shrugged. Replied.
“I didn’t know his name. I just liked the video game Batman.”
He was referring to the Arkham Asylum series of video games. I nodded. Then said.
“Well, I interviewed Kevin not long ago. He was a great man. Juilliard graduate. A true stage actor. Lived with Robin Williams long ago. That’s the guy who voiced him.”
His eyes widen. “Whoa, no way.”
“Yeah. Know what else? Kevin was queer. Video Game Batman. That Batman in your head? He was openly out as a proud gay man before he died.”
And that’s when the car went silent. Then the young man stared out in the distance, gripping the wheel, daydreaming, where, far off, in a better world in his head… the Bat-Signal still burned.
The Problems with AI-Companionship
Everyone on Wall Street is claiming that the utilization of AI will showcase potential growth prospects, despite data proving the contrary, such as a recent study by MIT highlighting that 95% of companies that adopted the tools reported zero return on investment.
It’s concerning given that GenAI’s most adopted product, ChatGPT, is showing risks in terms of its unregulated adaptation. Its effect on its users has been concerning, let alone its catastrophic resource damage in terms of energy output and the needed supply of freshwater for both the software’s servers and the semiconductor chips that make them.
Recently, we learned how LLMs are being utilized as a cheap alternative to therapy, especially amongst youth and those unable to afford it, despite it being statistically proven to be rife with stigmatic biases and lacking the expertise to discourage acts or thoughts of suicidal ideation. We learned the hard way when a 16-year-old committed suicide with the help of AI just weeks ago.
As of right now, there are numerous cases of individuals spending hundreds of hours having conversations with their AIChatbots, being in relationships with their AI, and even… yep, you know it’s true, having cybersex with their AI companions in what’s proving to be not-so-private explicit chatbots.
Why it’s all very concerning, and how it relates to comics, is that these products are being built to respond in a sycophantic way with their users, often inspired by elements of wish fulfillment and flights of fantasy.
LLMs are very much catered towards telling the delusional truths users want to hear, whether it’s conspiracy theories or the literal questioning by a sane man as to whether or not they are a real-life superhero.
When this real-life incident occurred in the beginning story, it was only a young man enamored with an AI over of one of his favorite characters. In the two years since, voice-AI and chat-AI technology have been adapted tremendously, particularly amongst the youth, and especially recently, with the development of AI-Companions. Which was always sort of the next stage of the technology, combined with voice and video simulation.
In a recent report published by Common Sense Media, over 70% of teens sampled in a recent study, aged 13-17, have utilized AI companions, with over half of them using it regularly. Teens in particular are vulnerable to using AI companions for friendship, as it’s becoming an alternative in lieu of social interaction and public spaces.
Now, to be clear, we are still very far from a real-life JARVIS from Iron Man, not only in that we have yet to accomplish AGI, but also because we are in constant recontextualization of what that AGI even means, along with its usefulness. The goal posts of success keep changing; the more trillions are spent on what AI can hypothetically do, when it should be critical of where AI adaptation is failing, because that’s actually where innovation succeeds.
The invention of the Microwave, the X-ray, or Penicillin: human mistakes that we reappropriated into something else for a better cause. In fact, the internet itself was never meant to be what this is right now; it was originally meant for underground lines of communication in the threat of a potential nuclear war.
There’s a history of humans failing or messing up tasks with tools, only to find a better use for them. AI can compute repeatable scenarios at a fraction of the time, yet it’s being rightfully scrutinized as a tool that makes human problems, such as loneliness and the severe mental health problems that come with it, that much worse.
The Creation of the Technological Loneliness Problem
There is a cross-generational loneliness problem that’s been more noticeable since the pandemic. People are more isolated than ever for a plethora of reasons, but it’s mostly got to do with technology. The evolution of digital spaces, age-old divide-and-conquer strategies from the rich/powerful (this will always be a hidden cause of problems, just look at gerrymandering), and, of course, the constant watchdog surveillance state vigilantism thanks to smartphones.
Though perhaps the biggest culprit is a lack of shared spaces where people can come together, as compared to being scrutinized apart. Social media and its scrutiny of “I hate you” culture is worse than ever. It’s why there’s a rise in the emergence of chatbot therapists and even companions, essentially creating a product that we can force something to agree with us.
The rise of pornography, an issue since the 70s, and particularly amongst OnlyFans, has connected with fans, particularly lonely men. The bridge between fantasy and reality is becoming a commodity in a world that’s constantly and artificially digital. A big reason why this platform weirdly changed that industry, which had gone from movies to internet hubs and back to privatization, was because of the salesmanship of an intimate, exclusive experience not consumed in the billions (despite the fact it still very much is).
Yet this pursuit of ‘genuine’ star-worshiping trend can also be traced back to the rise in influencers, which, in turn, we can thank Paris Hilton in the contemporary sense, though it is a pattern that dates all the way back to Zsa Zsa Gabor. And even further so, with the evolution of the high society socialite in a post-World War II era, The Great Gatsby celebrations be damned.
If Monomythic is to say anything, it’s that everything that is being done has been done before; we just evolve into cycles again and again, so take solace that someone at some point in time in history was dealing with the weight of the world we’re all feeling today…
We are never really alone in any of this.
Take, then, in post-post-modernity (or whatever the hell we call it), for instance, the beginnings of the Japanese V-Tuber movement. Kizuna AI’s rise to global popularity in 2016, which, while not an actual AI, is an actor and a team of people using a voice modulator along with a digital avatar.
Kizuna AI gained a massive following with over 300 million views on her channel, launching what would be the global awareness of the V-Tuber movement. How she did so was by being cute and bubbly behind a camera, having live streams and concerts, and die-hard fanbases dedicated to her name, all with the promise of a pseudo fan-bond and the beginnings of a digital influencer world.
Add in the rise of Let’s Play videos from streamers such as PewDiePie and the advance of technology in terms of what was capable in live-streaming, especially amongst gamification technology (like on Steam); this led to new platforms such as Twitch and TikTok, plus the good old reliable YouTube.
The result was the creation of a whole new form of media that’s evolving and going wildly underreported on, despite it being – as shocking as this may sound – probably the most consumed form of entertainment media in the entire industry. The thing that is proliferating those TikToks and short-form content reels.
Do you want to know what’s killing the movie theatres, comic books, and streaming TV services? It was the influencer. How much they popularized digital media platforms with their profiles and short-form content, whether it be through online reviews, or worse (and something very much rising) full-on recaps of books, movies, and games (or even outright playthroughs), so that you’d never even have to purchase these very items in the first place.
Now, this piece is running on too long, so I’ll say in short, A LOT of it has to do with accessibility. The prices of these things, along with how much time it would take to get caught up on all these things (just think of the MCU alone). But I must stress that influencer?
They rose in demand to meet the loneliness problem. And not just in a male loneliness kind of way, but in a way to fill in the lack of community in a place where we don’t feel threatened.
But intellectual property rights?
Although there have been efforts with large class action lawsuits over IP infringement, the very nature of the technology’s ability to pop up at lightning fast speeds makes the issue almost reminiscent of the early NAPSTER days, leading to, what many have called, the “enshittification” of the internet; a coin term coined by British-Canadian author Cory Doctorow regarding the decline in quality of online experiences as more and more platforms prioritize scaling for profit over content.
I’ve been arguing for months, it’s really beyond that at this point – as most big tech investments/financial spending is spotlight focused on finding the breakthrough product of AI.
Now you should know, the blur between characters of fiction, particularly in comics, and its utilization in AI with IP of established characters has been rising, whether it be a Batman fan-film made entirely out of AI, or the many places now utilizing AI-Chatbots based on superhero IP (I won’t link them, as I don’t support them, but a quick search will show a plethora of them). It’s up to creators, and weirdly, these megacompanies like the owners of the big two, to weirdly to bring the hammer down, but with the current administration under Trump’s incredibly lax AI regulation in pursuit of Big Tech’s short-term profits, I’m not sure any of this will actually make a difference.
Though I will also stress that recently both Warner Brothers (DC’s owner) has sued Midjourney for copyright infringement on the very issue at hand with unlicensed IP usage for AI and Anthropic, one of the leading Gen AI tech companies, has just had to pay out a 1.5 billion dollar settlement to multiple authors both of which cases are major developments in setting precedents for this very conundrum.
Yet, it must be stressed, there is a universal difference between Batman, the actor playing him, and the life of that very same actor. These distinctions are important. Especially in an era where the actors, talents, artists, and creators behind them are being forgotten about, and instead are becoming the product of a strange AI-Companion reality, in this case, Kevin’s voice and longstanding role and legacy as Batman.
I don’t know where this is going, sadly, but I know this is a very big issue. It’s also, sadly, one we haven’t really done anywhere near enough to address, even though this is not only coming for us all – evidence points to its already here.
A Dire Warning for Content Creators: You’re Next
It’s strange to sort of stress that content creators were a major cause of the shift in journalism over the past decade, only to write a warning about what’s to come. If you haven’t realized, there’s a reason I talked a bit about V-Tubers… because I do think America’s version of that is on the horizon, sponsored by the very companies that would’ve paid content creators.
Look at Imma Gram, of Aww, Inc. Imma Gram is an influencer with over 388,000 followers. She gives fashion advice for big brands like Coach, is a big new name in the influencer space, and even has a TED talk. She’s made deals with Porsche, BMW, and Amazon. Is a person who attends fashion shows, goes to red carpets, and calls herself a “virtual girl”…
That’s because Imma Gram does not exist. She is a digital avatar and CGI creation, likely one day, a potential future AI-Companion, and a ‘virtual human’. This is not the beginning of this trend. Recently, as seen by the analytics firm Playboard, out of a hundred of the fastest-growing YouTube channels in July this year, nine of those were AI-generated. As a result of these actions, YouTube has made efforts to block the sharing of ad revenue for AI-generated content.
Brands and PR groups seek genuine reach as a priority, but where it’s changing is with the rise of digital influencers. A digital mascot to represent a product without any real-person accountability. With AI-video scaling at massive rates, we’re already witnessing the rise of AI-Influencers, who, over time, might actually be harder to differentiate from real-life individuals.
Most you can spot a mile away, but the reality we’re now entering, and one that needs more discussion in the journalism space, is… what happens when we can’t tell the difference. When do we get America’s Kizuna AI?
Only time will tell.
