Gruffalo illustrator Axel Scheffler weighs legal action against AI firms

Axel Scheffler, the German-born illustrator who drew The Gruffalo, said in an interview published on Friday, 30 October 2026 that he is seriously considering legal action against artificial-intelligence companies over images that imitate his work. Scheffler said he has spoken to a lawyer in Germany and that any case would aim to protect creators rather than win money for himself. No lawsuit has been filed, and he did not name a company.

Generative AI image tools can now produce pictures "in the style of" a living artist within seconds. They learn to do this by training on very large collections of images, often taken from the internet without the artists' permission. Illustrators argue that this uses their work to build a product that then competes with them. AI companies reply that training is not copying: the model learns patterns and does not store the original pictures. Scheffler said that seeing other illustrators take AI companies to court is part of why he is now weighing a case of his own, which suggests the dispute is spreading from a few test cases to a wider group of working artists.

That is the exact argument Scheffler expects to face, and it is why he says the burden of proof is the hard part. In copyright law, an artist usually has to show that a specific work was copied, not just that a new picture looks similar. A drawing style on its own is generally harder to protect than a particular drawing. Cases in Germany have tested these questions; reports note that German claimants, including music collecting societies, have won cases against AI companies where they could show that the firms had reproduced protected texts word for word.

Scheffler's interest matters because of who he is. The Gruffalo is a widely read picture book whose characters are familiar to families in many countries. If an artist this well known takes a case to court, it could draw wider attention to how AI firms collect training data, and encourage other illustrators to act.

Short-term: Nothing changes yet, since no case has been filed. Scheffler's comments add to growing pressure from authors, artists and musicians on AI companies to licence or pay for the works they train on.

Long-term: If he does sue and wins, AI firms could face tighter limits on using illustrators' work without permission in Europe, and courts could give clearer answers on whether training an AI model counts as copying.

Who is affected: Illustrators and authors of children's books, publishers, AI companies that build image generators, and readers who buy illustrated books.

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