Artie Smarty Books Use AI to Create Illustrated Content with a Sense of Humor
A New York Times editor uses a nom de plume to publish humor books that use Artificial Intelligence to develop cartoon art for an illustrated humor series. Using guerilla marketing tactics, he hopes to go direct to consumers without a traditional big time publisher.
| 05 Dec 2025 | 04:34
“My Magnus Opus,” says the author. The book presents famous musicians as dogs and parodies their well-known songs from a canine point of view. “I really tried hard to keep the humor elevated.”
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This book has photo-realistic images of cats in varied iconic New York City locations, and each has a social media post written by the sassy cat pictured. (
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Seizing on the viral doll, Twomey wanted to do something a bit edgier. Says the author: “So it’s a dark kind of fun, but I hope it connects with people on that level.” (
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Of Twomey’s first book as Artie Smarty, the author says: “It’s not a new idea -- misheard lyrics -- but what makes this one different is the illustrations that are from silly to surreal.” (
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Twomey’s Christmas book is his best-performing so far because it’s fresh, new, fun, kids’ material, introducing a new slate of characters in the North Pole, each with its own song. The book ends by asking the child audience to create a new Christmas character, and provides a page for them to do that. (
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Matt Twomey’s illustration of his alter ego, Artie Smarty, was created by the author and ChatGPT. (
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Matt Twomey, Senior Staff Editor at The New York Times, and Award-winning indie documentary film director and editor, used Artificial Intelligence to create a five-book illustrated humor series under the pen name Artie Smarty. (
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Matt Twomey, a senior staff editor at The New York Times, and Award-winning indie documentary film director and editor, recently launched an experiment in independent publishing: enlisting Artificial Intelligence to create a five-book illustrated humor series under the pen name Artie Smarty.
The one-man-band author combines AI-assisted content creation, digital marketing, and guerrilla marketing tactics to challenge traditional publishing paradigms. He manages all aspects from writing and design through marketing strategy and multi-channel promotion.
Each title celebrates the unpredictable spark of imagination — and the simple joy of a book that makes you think, grin, or say, “Wait, what?”
You start laughing before you’ve even cracked the books because of titles like: “Here We Are Now...In Containers!: 40 Deeply Silly Misheard Rock Lyrics Brought to Life in Illustration,” “Catty Cats of New York City: Complete With Insta Posts,” “Rock Dogs: Where All Your Favorite Rock Stars Are Canine Funny Song Parodies for Dog Lovers and Music Lovers,” “Shaker, The Flightless Reindeer: And 15 Other Unsung Christmas Helpers, Misfits and Troublemakers, Inventive Children’s Book,” and this pop culture skewer, “Death to Labubu: 19 Doomed Rhymes for the Scourges of Our Times.”
Artie Smarty enjoys nothing more than making people smile. And he did just that when he, aka Matt Twomey, sat down with Straus Media to talk about his humor books, being an independent publisher, and experimenting with AI.
So, who’s Matt Twomey?
I consider myself a serious journalist, and I take my work seriously. This [humor book] project is a side hustle, and it’s really an experiment in connecting creativity with these powerful new technological tools.
When I had the idea for these novelty gift books, I basically wanted to see if I could leverage AI and self-publishing on the KDP platform to gate-crash publishing.
And then it grew into kind of a bigger entrepreneurial project.
Is all your artwork AI-generated, or did you hire an illustrator?
The illustrations are predominantly AI, and I did some visual editing in Canva. Part of my idea from the start was to leverage AI image-making to make these books. And that is not an easy skill to master. Learning to prompt in a way that delivers images that you want, well, I certainly don’t want to compare it to the skill of an artist, but it’s an interesting craft in its own right.
When and how did you become Artie Smarty?
I decided early on I wanted to use a pen name. I thought a fictional author could also be part of the fun of the books. Artie Smarty has a role in some of them; the story kind of turns on him, and in the author profile, there’s always a kind of wacky story from his life, so he would be part of the fun.
Also, I wanted a pen name because I’ve written these two longer works, and I’d want to make my name with my long-form writing.
Okay, and how did you come up with Artie Smarty?
Well, it’s a coded name that people who think about it might get. It’s like that other word that came up in our conversation: Artificial Intelligence.
So, it’s derived from that.
Describe your books, genre-wise.
So, they’re not storybooks. I call them illustrated humor books, novelty books, or gift books. They’re meant to be light and fun and make great gifts. And I would say the experiment is more entrepreneurial.
And I do want to be very open that I am using AI to help me make these books. That’s part of the experiment. I’m one guy with a laptop, seeing if I can do it on my own. And trying to maintain standards of humor and standards of writing.
How did you choose these subjects, like “Rock Dogs”?
My thinking was, ‘What are things people are passionate about, or that people love in their lives?’ People love their music and their pets. So those were two big drivers.
Do you think this A1 publishing experiment you’re doing can inspire others to get up, get going, and not wait for anybody to give them the opportunity, just go do it?
First of all, it’s very exciting to have this path that is not blocked by gatekeepers. It is very exciting, basically going direct to the market.
I will say that I think that the self-publishing, unfortunately, throws up as many obstacles as it takes down, because there is such a glut of both quality stuff and that which isn’t keeping the same kind of standards, and that’s what gives it the stigma.
And then speaking about using AI images, there’s so much AI slop out there getting published, too.
The market is somehow going to have to figure out how to organize itself to find the diamonds in the rough. I think some entrepreneur is going to figure out how to sift through and get to the good, and they’ll probably use AI to do it.
Lorraine Duffy Merkl, our contributing literary editor, is the author of the novel, “The Last Single Woman In New York City.”
”I do want to be very open that I am using AI to help me make these books.” Matt Twomey