Dj/producer Diplo has apologised after coming under fire for using a graphic to promote a new project without permission, and sending rude messages to the artist on Twitter.com.

On Wednesday (11Feb15), the dance music star took to instant photo and video messaging app Snapchat to tease fans with a trailer for the remix of Jack U's Take U There featuring Missy Elliott.

He featured an animated image of a house in motion, but Brooklyn-based cartoonist Rebecca Mock claims that Diplo used her piece without her permission.

She took to Twitter.com to call the producer out, and wrote, "@diplo has shared one of my .gifs as background art for his music w/out asking me. my work isn't your clip art dude. don't sample my gif."

However, instead of immediately crediting Mock, the beatmaker rudely responded to her and one of her defenders, and wrote back, "i credited her what u want me to do ? Eat her out and massage her boobs at the same time as well".

He later deleted the tweet and credited Mock on the same video cross-posted on his Instagram.com account.

After engaging in a war of words with Mock's defenders, including Portishead's Geoff Barrow on the microblogging site, Diplo later sent an apology to Mock in a lengthy post on Twitter.

It reads, "@rebeccamock sorry if i hurt your feelings, or trivialize your art... so maybe I was posting music I'm working on.. i used a gif... found out later that u made said gif... and then u said it was hard to reach me on twitter.

"But out of respect for you (you were polite enough in your correspondence) i saved the snapchat to my phone and posted it on instagram but this time i said the gif was made by you and added your name.. something i never seen done on any spontaneous vine/instagram or snapchat posts...

"Do i have time for every piece of art in my studio to be credited on every medium of social media.. actually i don't.. maybe i need an intern."

He continued, "I'm sorry i have trollish tendencies on the internet and i like to fight with people.. if your friends and "supporters" hadn't attacked me we could have probably shared some correspondence maybe even worked on something together ... but when people attack me i tend to s**t on each and every one of them because thats just what i do.. I'm sorry thats my nature...

"i wasn't selling it (the image) or making a profit over it.. i put it up on my instagram because that's all i could do to make people aware that it was yours.. if you would like me to delete it i will. Was i an a**hole? yes.. probably."