After all, in fact it is... Fanfiction.
Surely you won't claim that fanfiction somehow threatens the authors of the works?
Take, for example, The Fan and the Pony Girl. I don't think anyone was particularly upset or offended by the existence of this work. After all, Sleepy himself often published fanworks. Yes, they were made without the use of AI, but nevertheless, they were also redrawings of his own work. So everything is clear with the fanfics. However, there is another interesting point that for some reason we are overlooking.
Sleepy truly has a huge amount of fans all over the world, and of course, some of them, for one or another reason, don't speak English (or speak it very poorly). While individual images are generally understandable and you don't need to know the language to appreciate the aesthetics of beautiful feet or soles, — comics, especially those with any kind of plot, are a different story. As far as I know, Sleepy only publishes comics in English. There may have been Spanish versions a long time ago, but I'm not going to confirm that. In any case, there have never been any official publications from Oni Press or Dark Horse or smb else who could license the comics to other languages, and most likely never will be, due to the nature of the comics.
Therefore, a person who doesn't have even a basic level of English has only two options for reading Sleepy comics (and not only Sleepy ones, actually) - use an online translator (which is, to put it mildly, not very convenient), or read the comics in an amateur (fan) translation. And here, perhaps, is where the most interesting part begins. Putting aside the piracy issue, there's nothing wrong with fan translations themselves, as an idea. However, the issue here isn't about the scanlaters themselves—that could be debated at length—but rather the quality of their work. Yes, there are numerous examples of fans producing high-quality translations, preserving all the original's features, adapting jokes, and generally performing just as well as official localizers. Let's leave such examples aside. We'll also leave out examples where, for lack of alternatives, translation is done in two stages. For example, from English to Spanish and then from Spanish to Italian.
The worst thing is when a translation is done poorly right away, and even worse when these "translators" set up Patreon or SubscribeStar and ask for donations for such quality of work. Of course, that's their business, and no one is forcing anyone to pay for the translation, but doesn't this level of shoddy work offend the author even more? I don't see the point in giving specific examples. I think many forum members understand what I mean, as Sleepy's work is regularly translated into Spanish, German, Russian, Chinese, Portuguese, and many other languages. I'm sure many have encountered such examples at least once. I think this kind of thing can, to some extent, cause just as much reputational damage to the author as AI generations.
I personally witnessed how one person, having encountered this kind of translation and calling the comic "meaningless, incoherent nonsense" (and considering that the level of knowledge of this kind of "translators" usually leaves much to be desired), decided to start learning English himself, which, in general, is quite commendable. On the other hand, as we've said many times before, the presence of all these translations, leaks, fan-made works, and now AI generations, among other things, contributes to Sleepy's recognition. After all, each of us became acquainted with his work either through Tumblr, translators, or forums. I wouldn't be surprised if a new generation of fans discovers him through AI. Whether this will spur Sleepy to change his attitude toward content and its distribution is another matter. After all, paranoia and the drawn-out pace of comics, as I've already mentioned, are unlikely to foster high fan engagement.
Ten years ago, this could still be argued, but now, when there are a huge number of other comics, games, films, books and other entertainment in the world, it is unlikely that a large number of people will wait with bated breath for six months for two new pages to leak, on which approximately the same thing happens as on the previous two. Even judging by this forum, engagement has dropped dramatically. I could be very wrong, of course (and I'd really like to be), but something tells me it's not just the hiatus problem, so it'll be very interesting to see what the outcome will be.
P.S. Yesterday's leak isn't bad overall, it reminds me of Sleepy 2021 with millions of variations of the same image. But to be fair, he's had better art. We'll see what we see in 2026.