Why People Are Boycotting This Popular Author 

Completely agree that that thread can be read as a threat, and it's 100% my mistake for not spending more time trying to highlight that my goal with it was to inform new authors of the risks they take when entering the market with AI material. The vast majority of them have no idea of the potential impact, and of course they don't. You can't be informed on what you don't know you don't know. Just like I don't think 99.9% of the people using Midjourney have any real sense of the negative impact the tech has already had and is continuing to have. It's like if you were visiting a country where you didn't know that smiling was an insult. It seems like an obvious thing to do (like how cheap/free, really cool art might seem like the obvious thing to use on a book cover), and you can't know you're about to alienate yourself from a massive portion of that country. Also I should have done a better job of highlighting how everything I stated was in my experience. And while I have a LOT of experience in this space, it's hardly the only experience, much less the only opinion.

I work in publishing and a great many small presses (not sure about the larger ones) have started added adding AI sections to their contracts (both that AI can't be used in the writing of the book and that the publisher won't use AI in the cover) - this is of course different from self-publishing but thought it was relevant. I find the entire thing interesting from an anthropological standpoint - how we are reacting to this major change in society.

I think Bryce just said publicly what many have already been thinking. I've enjoyed using AI art for my own personal purposes, but the more I've thought about it and its potential effects on artists, the less and less I've been using it. I contracted an artist on Upwork who's working on my cover now, because I at least knew that using AI artwork in an official capacity would never be a good thing. AI can be a tool for good, but in the art/creative space, or for reasons you pointed out in your research, there are a lot of aspects of it that you just can't replicate with a non-human.

It seems this is a social issue and many people like to take a stand on social issues. But as a reader, I am on a tight budget, so I read most books from the library or on kindle unlimited. The cover doesn’t really matter to me since I’m not collecting these books, just reading what’s between the covers. But I appreciate your insight into this issue and the insight you add!

As someone who works in digital compositing and digital art in the film industry I am really being challenged daily by Ai at the moment. It is a huge deal in the film industry. However, as an author, I do use Ai as a tool to assist in mostly research. Despite from my very negative opinions in film, I concluded very early on that I could either spend hours in a library or on Google researching a topic which essentially was going to make up less than 20% of the first chapter of my book; or I could ask the Ai questions and have immediate and very focused answers which I could then incorporate into my story plot. As an example - What was the correct names and terminology for the tools and equipment used in falconry during the crusades..? Ai is a tool. It is an extremely effective tool. But that's where it should stay. I agree 100% with the opinion of art remaining the outward expression of the human being!

8:40 that is actually capitalism. In the system if you don't like something, you boycott it. People defend (or criticize) capitalism without understanding what capitalism is.

If you make enough money from writing to pay artists in every book realise, yeah don't use AI or you deserve to be Boycott. But, for someone who don't make enough money from writing to even support himself, he can use AI art to promote him book or maybe he's just writing as a hobby, sharing his work for free, AI art would help him.

Okay as an artist, creator, and writer, as well a someone with a pretty decent grasp on the matter. (I've been into all sorts of stuff like this since 1990.) How much do we compensate an artist for how much of their work is sampled? For instance, do we pay them $200 every time a single eyelash from their work is used? Or do we pay them a penny? Or is it a fraction of a penny? What about if the AI uses a lip? A fingernail? Do we compensate them for a color palette? What if it's none of those things but their "style"? How do we define style? Can you copyright a style? If every painting or artwork is more unique than a fingerprint, even if done in the same way ("style") ... and that way drifts in all sorts of ways, how do we copyright and or compensate that? Especially if the AI is looking at the general characteristics? What if another artist emulates that style? Do they also have to compensate the "original" artist? And if so, how do we determine compensation for the "original" which.. lets face it, they conglomerated their "Style" from those that came before. They did as much sampling and taking from other artists, without compensation. So do we have to force them to compensate the people they "stole" from? And how do you do that without a comprehensive and complete list? How do you enforce any of that? If one artist has a style, can nobody else also have the same or similar style? How do you do that with hundreds of thousands or even millions of artists? How similar is too similar? How long before it becomes "the same" or "identical"? The problem is that it's all subjective, and there's no way to approach it with objectivity. A single AI generated image can have thousands, or even millions, possibly billions of permutations and "sampled" sources. A portion of a line here, a half of a brush stroke there, a tiny piece of a texture over that way. And there's 100,000 little pieces like that for a single image. And that doesn't even take in stylistic choices, like photorealism, octane renders, or resembling an oil painting. All of them have so many variables that go into it. And you know what? Every artist does this. They sample from every single thing they've ever seen. Every cartoon, every painting, every anime, every photograph, every movie, every TV show, every bad five year old's drawing, every Rembrant, every Bob Ross they've ever seen. Where do we draw the lines? It's a very slippery slope. Trying to codify, bottle, sell, and tax every single scrap of every expression of visual creativity is a road to Hell that will be paved with good intentions.

Traditional publishers don't give an author any say in what the cover of their books look like. Those are done in house. I'd be curious to know if these traditional publishers have a clause on AI in their author contracts or not? Would they let an author know? How would an aspiring writer find that out?

There is actually a quite active and supportive AI writer’s community that support one another. I think in the end the AI people will win this battle because they will out produce the non-AI people. So the idea that you won’t find support is limited to a certain group. It is very similar to belonging to a religious sect and being convinced that if you leave the tribe and find another faith you will be destroyed. I personally don’t like writing with AI, but enjoy the immersive process I have of creating my own prose, but don’t disparage those who have found great power in the AI process. This is especially true for many neurodivergent people, and people with various emotional disabilities. While new, I do believe that AI will outlast the negatives and like photographs were feared that they were going to destroy paintings, because like AI they can easily be produced, they replace humans with a machine, they remove the human aspect of interacting with the art.

I think the thing missing from this convo is some of what was in the initial twitter thread:: namely that a vast majority of indie authors will never recoup the cost of their high price cover and artists may have no choice but to lower their prices or the AI cover may just replace them no matter who likes it or not. Bryce says we may not have the chance to work with Felix Ortiz, but brother I’m telling you most of us can’t afford him anyway. A little consideration should be shown for the indie authors and the fact that the vast majority of us are still working our full time jobs. From a purely financial standpoint, it makes little sense. Personally I won’t use an ai cover myself and I don’t mind paying for the art for my cover because I want a specific look to my books, but I also understand WHY an indie author is going to want the cheaper option.

Sometimes Ai art is the only option when limited budgets for cover art, but I have seen published authors in barnes and noble, and the covers were obvious ai art, gothicka for example

Maybe Rothfuss can use AI to write book 3 for him, since his ghost writer is dead.

My question to this entire topic is this, am I to believe that all of the artwork being used on all of the book covers today are not AI? They are all the same design no matter the publishing house no matter the artist. They all look like they're created by AI. So is it just one artist now having a fit because they're doing everybody's book covers? There's no uniqueness anymore in book covers, at all. So if someone uses AI, and they come up with a unique design, and that design goes along with their story, is it being said I am not to purchase the book because of an industry's attitude? Is that how this is going to go?

What is fair compensation?

As an artist by trade who also writes, I agree with Bryce's tweets. However, I think we are shooting ourselves in the foot by not talking about ethical use of AI in publishing because there is a place for it and it is already used by writers in general. Grammarly and ProWritingAid are hugely popular editing platforms and they employ AI to help edit and reword sections for legibility. The situations I'm thinking of are: - What if I accidentally write a chapter in the wrong tense and need to edit it? AI is a great tool for that. - What if I'm a graphic designer who found the perfect stock photo for the cover I'm making, but I need to smoothly transition from one stock image to the other for the wrap-around cover? Should I be canceled for the inch of space that AI-generated, even if it was generated by Adobe? - What if I'm an author who needs an idiom that has "X" general meaning, that is appropriate for a 1950's time period? Situations where the AI takes the back seat to the creative, rather than driving. Situations where the artists/writer is going to be doing the work anyway, but AI streamlines the process.

in the early 1900's people yelled they would not wear cloth loomed in a mill. The same argument appeared when magazines began using photography instead of drawings and illustrations. How did that work out for them. AI is the future. Yes there are concerns right now and there should be. Issues with any new technology are to be expected. Personally as a reader, I look at the description or the book not so much the cover. A book cover is the wrapping paper for the true product the words inside and just like wrapping paper, before the real product can be enjoyed the wrapping must be torn away and forgotten. As for O'Connor's comments, it's called gatekeeping.

I took Bryce’s message more like an informative piece, than a thread! But I fully understand how it can be interpreted that way! It is definitely a very sensitive topic, thanks for sharing!

Interesting subject. My question is...are bestsellers really made on booktube and booktok? My book marketing consists of social media pages geared toward readers (not writers), SEO, my live engagements (ghost tours), and paid advertising on Amazon. Marketing to authors seems like a lot of work for little return, if it's like Twitter used be; I got a small book deal at Pitmad but few authors in that community actually bought books.

Welp, for authors supporting AI covers... I wonder how they will react when it will come to AI stories.

"One of the biggest names in fantasy..." Never heard of any of these chuckleheads.

Not only books, I refuse to listen to any music bands that decided to put out an album with lazy AI art. Lazy and shoddy was a good description, especially for the bands/authors who are already well known.

I'm reading 'Galaxy Jane' by Ron Goulart, a 1985 book original published with a Boris Vallejo painting as the cover. The ebook version I purchased recently published by Wildside Press, has a much more simple cover, probably done by an artist with a computer. I wonder if the jump between the quality and time spent between the two covers isn't analogous to the decrease in expense and time to make an AI cover. I know that this ignores the issue of taking a job away from an artist, but it seems as the economics of book publishing get tighter and tighter that this is a continuation of the ruthless streamlining of commerical publishing. Sucks.

You were the perfect person to make this video - thanks!

Not sure I could tell the difference between AI art and 'normal' art and if I could I don't think it would influence my decision over whether to read a particular book or author. However really interesting video and opened my eyes to a subject I'd not really thought about previously.

Great summary of the issue, thank you!

AI is a very sensitive subject right now. Marketing is such a massive and powerful influence on business and our world around us. Sadly, most AI examples we have available to us at present are marketing tools. Googles search engine...Meta's search engines...other social media has added AI to their platforms...all of these are intended to disseminate information but also gather/collect information to be used in marketing or what they call focused marketing. Graphical AI is currently a gimmick more-so then anything taken too seriously (in the public eye) because it's used for filters and templates to make changes to our photos or take a photo we input and create a entirely new photo. I feel as though we simply do not know the power of AI just yet. And instead see what we currently have as a scheme to collect data about us. The idea of a AI reading a book and finding plot-holes...my god, can you imagine that? What a fantastic tool. But...is that even a possibility? I don't see it in our current AI models. They are far far far too lacking.

AI art still has flaws, but it ain't going anywhere, period. I've seen some artists say that they utilize AI for references, which I see NO issue with. Of course, the unhinged Luddites say that this is also the worst thing in the world, but clearly it's not. Many artists utilize references to create, and it makes sense to use AI for this. I also think it's important to actually think about how people create. We create by being inspired, usually by one or two or more different things and squashing them all together (example: an alien civilization with a Roman aesthetic, or a Samurai aesthetic, or both). This can actually be very close to how AI art is generated. I'm not condoning straight up AI art - I personally don't like it, I think it's ugly and uncanny in a bad way. I also want to support actual artists. But, when used as a tool, AI can actually be a huge boon to creators.

Very well argued and stated. Thanks, Johan! Very well done!!

I think we have to divide things a little. Between using AI to assist in the creation process and using AI to create stuff wholecloth. Unlike you I do not think we will ever get to a place where something created entirely by AI will be anything but a curiosity. I do not think we can equate it with photography for the simple reason that AI lacks a human intent when doing its thing. A photographer, author, artist will have some reason to pick a subject and angle and so on. AI will not. And therefore AI cannot tell us anything about ourselves which is ultimately what art does. However AI as a tool. To check your grammar, to create compositions for a painting, to spin out plot ideas and so on, I think that has value. As long as it is a human being that creates the final piece wether it is a story or a picture. Also a lot of people are actually confused as to what constitutes AI. A lot of artists work digitally and if you use Photoshop and use a philter... technically that might be considered AI, but it is not what people think of as AI. I also argue that if you are a writer hoping to publish your work, you should "bring the artist along" by getting one to make your cover. You want to be recognized as an artist so do not at the same time abandon others, that is a very selfish way of thinking (and not all covers cost 1000 dollars)

How could anyone read that thread as a threat? He isn't in any position to threaten anyone - he's just pointing out the possible consequences (which have nothing to do with him). That's not a threat...

It’s inevitable. I don’t think the vast majority of consumers will know or care one way or another if the art is ai or human, at some point if not already there will be a NYT Best Seller that is completely AI generated from the art to the words to the little picture of the author on the back. There were already some with ai cover art. I’d say within the next few years. I think and will give both artist and authors the freedom to learn to either coexist, adapt, or set themselves apart in order to survive and thrive the ai revolution with out trying to intentionally kneecap them in their attempts to figure it out.

I know of at least one very anticipated indie release that I saw big name Booktubers promote. It was quite obvious the cover was AI, which none of them touched upon-and even went as far as praising the it. People are not educated enough to know the difference because they never exercised their visual arts muscle.

While I agree that AI has some ethical issues, I think many authors are a bit too stuck in an anti-AI echo chamber to realize how the general public views AI. I think AI art is much better than most people give it credit for. The cover for Bob the Wizard already showed this when it won the SPFBO cover contest. People could only prove it was an AI assisted cover by zooming in and going through the actual photoshop files. No average buyer / reader is going to do that. So while they might on some level have issues with AI covers, they will never notice a good cover used AI. Most will also simply not care. Yes, for authors and artists, the creative part is important. But plenty of people have little issue with accepting an ebook file from a friend without paying the author. They have no idea about any ethical issues AI art might have. Also, $1.000 is a lot more money for a cover than many succesful authors realize. It was mentioned briefly in the video, but then glossed over. $1.000 for a cover means you're looking at selling something like 350 books before it starts making money (without factoring in necessary editing). Most beginning indie authors never reach that level of success. Selling 100 copies of a book is a lot. As for being ignored by book influencers, again, that is a big author problem. I'm sure they get sent a lot of indie books, and they read very few of them. Daniel Green includes them in his reviews. But that's 1 a month? Getting picked up by an influencer big enough to move the needle is similar to winning the lottery. It's just not going to happen for most indie authors. All in all, I think those against AI are very vocal, to the point that people who don't care or are in favor of AI art simply wont talk or pretend to be against it. Just look at the post mentioned, where someone saying they'd use AI art gets cancelled. That kind of environment doesn't lend itself to an honest discussion. After that, no author in that thread is going to mention they're in favor of AI art.

There are communities where AI is used by writers for cover art. For example, Royal Road or other free web novel sites. The novels on that website are sometimes too niche to support a writer, and the text of the novel might be 100% hand written but the cover will be partly or entirely AI generated. Nobody is going to want to pay $1500 for an artist to make a cover for a free web novel about unicorn-riding dragon hunters in an alternate history WWII dark cottage core romance. In traditional and self published books, I have zero tolerance for AI. If I am paying $25 for a hardcover book, I want the text and the cover to contain 100% human art. I consider the act of purchasing a book to contain an implicit promise. If AI is used in the product at all, I think that is a broken promise. Note that broken promises are always unethical, independent to the question of whether AI is unethical.

Well I do agree with your points, but I would counter argue with the point of 1000-1500$ being not that much you save. Because if you cannot publish the book because you don't have that kind of money it's worse than AI art for once and secondly most selfpublished book don't even sell enough copies to break even so yes I would understand using an AI cover for that reason, but i also think it should be replaced with a professional one asap. But we also have to see that the copyright situation is more than foggy and in the long run there is also the risk of having to pay for copyright infringement and such which makes the "saving money" argument essentially worthless. So I think (i the money isn't there) taking time to learn cover design and putting together a solid cover, until the book made enough money to get a professional one, is of the safest route to go. (Or if you're lucky you find a cover artist who looks for a lector and you possess those skills so you can exchange services :) )

Honestly I find myself sticking to favorite authors and not buying newer author solely based on their covers. I’m old and old school so I don’t even really care for the cartoony cover art that is used for some books. That being said good AI doesn’t bother me in and of itself what bothers me is when AI art is stolen art. Digital artists are losing pieces because AI has taken from them. The photography analogy has merit in showcasing new versus original art, however that was not one stealing from the other. Photographers were not taking photos of paintings , simply the view that was being painted. Both have merit, both are different.

Most people are not dicks and we do want to look out for others, paying an artist at those rates is small money, we need to look out for the artists

In your discussion about the use of Artists’ work in the training of AI, you didn’t cover the fair use argument that the courts have already deemed legal in the Google scanning book case. Since Google only presented snippets of the book it was deemed fair use. AI uses even less than snippets of an artist’s work, but have turned the work into a mathematical model that allows the computer to “see” the art and then mixed with other artists’ mathematical models is able to learn this is how an object looks, this is how you paint in this style, this is common to this artist’s work. Etc. Since these are literally teeny tiny snippiest that only exist because they were scanned, is this different from the thousands of snippets of data in a brain that then uses all the books it has read, and the pictures it has viewed to create something new. With the exception of that first artist that painted on a cave wall thousands of years ago, most art has been borrowed and stolen from others whether imitation of the previous creator or a new interpretation of that previous work. Andy Warhol literally copied objects reframed them in a new way and created art. I await the courts and legislatures to work out the legal conundrums of this, but really wonder if legal precedent will support the argument.

In case you dont want to read the book i wrote in the comments 🤭😬 THANKS for the break down. Ive been sick and missed all of the drama !!

Ayyyyyeeee new shelves! Love them

People shouldnt use machines to help with any work they could hire a human to do. Example: dont use the self checkout at the grocery store, dont use self service gas stations, dont go to a automatic car wash, etc This was sarcasm btw Also, I wonder how many of these artists and authors told miners to learn to code or who laugh at "they took our jobs!" joke from South Park?

Indeed. If you don't tell folks the art is AI generated, then ... They won't know. Especially, if the art is only partially AI generated. People will get used to AI and soon people will respond with a shrug. Especially as AI pulls less directly from existing content. We've gotten used to machine generated clothing, food, furniture, and more. Soon machine generated art and literature will become commonplace. As a writer, this makes me sad, but it's inevitable.

Interesting breakdown of the issues here. I think you're right and AI is here to stay, so resolving those ethical issues around fair payment are really important.

Some readers and artists are more interested in dragging people than letting them use AI as just another tool. It's just something to make themselves sound more erudite. I'm an artist and I have had tremors in my hands preventing me from drawing for many years. But I can make my children's books with AI.

I think you have to consider what motives people have. Do people in an industry tend to band together in a 'you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours' fashion? This could create an 'insiders vs. outsiders' dynamic. What might happen if say ... agents, agented authors, editors, and cover artists band together to protect the incomes of all of the insiders at the expense of outsiders who are trying to establish a career. I think we saw this when POD publishing was new and too some degree, we still see it. There was an immediate bias against POD authors. Now, to be sure, POD opens the door to a lot of substandard writing. But not ALL POD writing is substandard. I believe that eventually, someone will find a way to more efficiently distinguish good POD writing. When that happens, the grasp that the traditional publishing industry has on the book industry will be loosened a bit. If you are a thinking person, you inevitably end up wondering about all of this. As creators, we have to ask how we might feel if AI writing replaced writing by humans. I imagine artists feel the way we authors might feel. In my opinion, this is a valid reason to pass on AI art, not because of any organized bias created to protect the interests of industry insiders.

When you look at the publishing industry, its become impassable for new writers to get bookdeals. publishers demand that tge writer advertises himself so that the book sells, editors are overbooked, and its impassable to get a publisher to comit for a long therm project, like a triolagy. AI could be helpfull in a lot of ways, managing yoire social media, spellchecking and keeping the novel consistant throughout. But AI will never replace artists, and any logical writer would see the potential working alongside AI once it becomes true AI, but in the current stage of the teck, its just a robot pluged to the internet, it cannot think, nor can it create.

I looked at AI as an option for editing and cover art, since I can afford nothing. Apparently I'm not au courant enough of such things to make them work so, I'm sticking with my editor in England and my daughter who is pretty much a more cartoon oriented artist. The former doesn't charge as she just wants to see me in print and the latter gets 5% of sales. No one is gonna make money off my stuff, but I can say I published.

I don't knowingly buy AI art right now but how long before it gets to where I won't be able to tell? I don't think that most people can't tell now and don't care.

Its impossible to market an ai if you need to pay every artist it steals from. There would be too many different artists it takes small things from, which would result in horrendous costs

What about the author that has very little money to purchase a proper cover?

Book covers help to sell books - especially if you've not picked up anything by that writer before. One of the first things that I personally check for is the artist for the book cover - I already hate when the name of the cover artist is in the tiniest font possible on the inside of the dust jacket sometimes. While I am aware that such tools can be used ethically by artists to clean up their own work, I'm absolutely horrified by the trend of people who lack artistic talent using something like Midjourney to essentially rip off the work of existing artists and then claiming that they created art. Not being talented at art isn't a free pass to devalue the dedication and experience of people for whom this is already a challenging career path. I'm not gifted at art, but I would hate to live in a world where people with talent don't bother to pursue it because they see no future.

If training is theft, then every writer is a thief. Because writers learn from other writers. Have they paid the writers they learned from? Such hypocrisy from the AI-haters. I hate that this is the community I belong to. I don't expect to make any money, oh well. I will be damned if I am going to be bullied by bigots. As they blacklist me, I will return the favor. Anyone willing to get to know the AI writer community should look up Jason Hamilton, The Nerdy Novelist.

i didn't think about the future of AI and the possibility of things like finding plot holes.🤔SCHNEE on youtube did a video a while back with his thoughts on AI for writers, and one point made was that AI can be a tool to help someone learn/improve on their craft; getting help to organize a scene or structure a sentence/paragraph better so that it reads more smoothly, but how many people will use it with this positive intention vs how many will use it as a short cut is the concern. Using AI as a way to improve your skill, i think, is a good thing. But it takes time, because you are learning from it and trying to understand why THIS works but THAT didn't work quite as well. If work was donated to the AI, there'd probably be less controversy because it was voluntarily done. As it stands, that is not the case. What might work beneficially to artists is if there was a way to create a private portfolio of their own work, so that they can later generate mach images to lay a foundation for a new piece and then work from there. It'd save them time and labor, but (again) as AI is now, that's not the case. Maybe if there was a way to mark the AI image coming from this or that server, there'd be less abuse of its use, but i really don't know

I'd go even further to say that AI has bad connotations to everyone right now, not just people in the creative space, whether it be uncanny generated art, stiffly written prose, jokes that don't make sense or bad advice on a Google Search, these companies are going full in on generative AI when at best it is in its infancy. Even the most amazing things that have been done with AI don't hold up when you scrutinize it the way people scrutinize art or humor or information. Some of it doesn't even hold up to common sense. Couple that with the fact that people have an anxiety about AI taking their jobs in almost every industry and/or creating an orwellian dystopia and it's really not a good look for professionals. I've seen people get criticized for using AI art in memes. MEMES.

Pretend I'm a professional artist. I peruse the internet for inspiration, aggregate some images on Pinterest or whatever, and then go to work on my freehand art project. The images I've researched are in my brain, and I am doing something with them. Do I owe any other artists money? Royalties on sales of book copies my art's on? And isn't what AI does just a rapid version of what a human does? In my opinion, the line should be drawn at the final, copyrighted product. Is the AI generated image, story, etc. infringing on the original creators' works, or is it simply "in the style of" a certain author or artist--because a human can do that, too, and it wouldn't necessarily constitute copyright or trademark infringement.

What if the author makes their own AI art for covers and illustrations? What’s wrong with that?

Enjoy reading Needful Things. I do use AI as a helper in making sure my sentences make sense. I also use it as an idea evaluator versus going to my friends with a new writing idea, to see if it is sound. Buf t havin g SO write for me or instead of me, not happening. SO isn't meant to write for you.

Something I've noticed about what I perceive as AI-generated book covers is that they are all the same in a manner of speaking. By that I mean they have that digital pristineness devoid of real character.

I write and use AI for images, its an amazing tool. You want me to pay an artist? pay me so I can do it. Aaah, see?

I think many indie publishers and big 5 are using ai art covers for newerr authors or authors with less followings to save money

How much will authors, editors, booktubers etc care when they are replaced by AI? All creatives need to support each other or we all lose out in the end

I'll admit, I've dabbled with software like Midjourney to try and create images to use as *inspiration* for writing my novels (I haven't agreed with using AI art on my 'products' ever since I found out how the data is mined for AI software.) What comes out has NEVER matched what I was seeing in my head - I don't just mean from a quality point of view, but also in interpreting what I was asking for in the first place. I could honestly get closer myself - and I'm a pretty mediocre artist! So I stopped using them even just for inspiration material, never mind anything that would go on a book cover. I'm not going to design my own cover art (biiig mistake if I want it to look halfway decent!) so I will eventually be looking at book design services (if I don't end up going trad pub and let them handle all that.) However, I don't know as yet if these independent book designing services are required to state if they use AI art or not - if this isn't an issue already, it's probably going to be in the near future.

An AI edit/reader tool would be amazing and if this happens, we'll have this same discussion with regard to loosing jobs in the editing industry. I personally wish that the fast track toward replacing humans in all industries would slow down and allow the quality of life of actual people catch up. This is not unlike the crisis created when automation replaced much cottage craft but that happened more slowly. Still I'm frustrated when capitalism replaces the lives of people with a better bottom line. It's ugly. I'm rambling but my ooint is that stealing is wrong and thankfully there are laws protecting intellectual property. There will always be people who don't care or feign ignorance. Your most important point is also my main take and that is that the laws need to be updated. Of course we all know that innovation of any kind has always worked more quickly than our legal system. I wish luck to anyone struggling to make it as an author and I hope for Lakers to get off their collective butts. Great article and thank you. P.s. I'm on my phone so I apologize for proofreading errors 🤭

Art shouldn’t have gatekeepers. If you acknowledge that it’s AI cover art I don’t see the issue. When artists attempt to gatekeep the industry then there is a problem. Cover art is EXPENSIVE, authors may not be able to afford 1500 for cover art for a small indie book. But this guy is effectively saying, if you can’t afford to 1500 to pay for a cover artist then you don’t deserve to put your art out there. That’s pretty shitty. If someone is honest about the AI tools that they used I don’t see an issue.

What if you write your own stories but generate AI art to illustrate your self written story / script in RU-vid for your videos? Does this make me an outcast from the writing or book community? I am a writer, but only use AI art for RU-vid. As a writer, it hurts to think that one day AI could replace true story telling from the creative, human imagination. I don’t think AI is there yet, but there may be a day when it will be. And that literally breaks by heart.

Canceled for a Cover? I have never checked who is the author of a cover. I am interested in the content, the author's work. Perhaps, my bad since the cover is also art.

I think you can't put the toothpaste back in the bottle tbh, there ARE some pros - for a self pub regular joe with an amazing story but no up the bum publisher being interested, story not ticking whatever boxes are required for the day - it's a no brainer. So it can only help small up and coming Authors who might not fit inside whatever the current box is. I think it sux that we are here, but we are so... you know. And I generally fall on the side of whatever gives individuals more agency being a good thing - if it's at the expense of Artists, well that sux but also - welcome to the rest of the world lol. I'm a systems analyst, I live in constant trepidation of the day a robot starts doing my job, and have quite literally spent a decade inventing new ways to add value to my job role in order to 'make myself irreplaceable' - Artists will work this out too man, in time.

I love a handmade painted cover.

My issue is simply this: Many people who are against AI for art will support it in other platforms. If we are going to hate AI, then we need to hate AI across the board. I had a conversation with my husband just 2 years ago about how this was going to take off quickly and take over everything. The whole "give them an inch" thing. Speak out against the AI but do it everywhere. Not just to support artists. AI is dangerous period. 🤷‍♀ That being said, threats are not ok.

I might buy the dude's books now even more lol

I am worried about AI cannibalising art and even information creation and innovation. But I also think there are similarities between a human reading things via physical medium or on the internet and then summarising that information and creating new content using their own inspiration versus AI doing a similar collation and summary of existing sources. The missing link is I suppose a human making unrelated connections and creating something new. But that is not guaranteed. Much new writing by humans, especially fiction, is a collage of previous writing with a personal style layered over that. Even academic writing or general non fiction writing isn't based on new research but a reinterpreting of existing primary research sources. Much more complicated with iimages and visual art. Is AI taking inspirtation or just cutting small slices of style from various existing works and reassembling? Therefore totally stealing? A human artist definitely will usually have seen older art and use that for inspiration. To me this seems very different to what AI is doing. But what do I know except that the future seems quite scary with this enourmous change sweeping towards us and with that change totally in the hands of a few entrepreneurs who don't want to acknowledge any social responosibility.

AI should only be used as a tool not as a replacement. What you talked about in the end about using it for plot holes or mistakes is fine imo, at that point it's an assistant. But until artists AND writers are being payed for the AI using their work I wouldn't use it to publish a book. I think we will get to that point eventually, but we're not there yet.

Wouldn't it be great if "dont judge a book by its cover" was something people were actuality capable of doing?

There's a band called unleash the archers, they're an example of trying to innovate and use AI in a way that's morally correct for the artist. Basically, they license the art directly from the artist to train their AI, they directly tell you where you kind find more about the artist and the process.

$1000 -$1500 is crap money if your book is going to sell like crazy. That will hardly get an artist through a month of rent and living expenses where i live. You've got to invest in your book and hes right imo. You might save a little in money but in the current climate it will probably hurt your career. Your aver6 joe might not check for this but they have friends that read too and artist friends hopefully keeping them in the know and i for one hope ai works on learning to fold my clothes and do things i dont want to do instead of taking that away from sn artist.

To me, the issue is simple. Using AI art for your cover does not show solidarity towards your fellow creators (in this case artists). This lack of solidarity feels hypocritical when writers are simultaneously complaining about AI potentially taking their jobs. It makes me wonder if they care about AI taking jobs in general, or if they only care when it's taking theirs specifically. Plus, if we have creatives devaluing the work of other creatives, what's to stop those who don't understand the hours of hard work that goes into creating a work of art from devaluing it too? And to be fair, the arts are already facing lots of questions regarding their importance and validity, so if anything we, as creatives, should have each other's backs

$1000 -$1500 is crap money if your book is going to sell like crazy. Thag will hardly get an artist through a month of rent and living expenses where i live. You've got to invest in your book and hes right imo. You might save a little in money but in the current climate it will probably hurt your career. Your aver6 joe might not check for this but they have friends that read too and artist friends hopefully keeping them in the know and i for one hope ai works on learning to fold my clothes and do things i dont want to do instead of taking that away from sn artist.

Devon's tweet is so silly to me. Apart from anything else, there's the obvious fact that "your argument against X is bad" doesn't entail "X is good". Thus his comment that Bryce has "convinced him to use AI art as much as possible" by giving an argument against AI art that Devon doesn't think is good is wrongheaded and just kind of silly. But more of an qissue is that his reading of Bryce's tweet is devoid of nuance or carefulness. Perhaps I'm missing something, but as far as I can tell, Bryce is clearly not trying to threaten anyone, he's saying "this practice is not popular among this community, so you will probably find yourself unpopular with that community if you engage in it, and this outweighs the benefits of the practice". That is far more nuanced and far less threatening than Devon makes it out to be, and I think construing it as a threat is both uncharitable and overdramatic. I don't know who either of these people are, so I might be missing something, but as I see it now Bryce is making a good point.

what an amazing and well thought video on something that impacts us more and more every day.

For me, AI for books is the same as Beyonce for music. Soulless entertainment.

Well, I think the main problem with AI is as you stated the fact that it's stealing. It's one thing that authors and artists are not compensated (that's pretty bad too), but they are not even asked for consent at this point if AI sites can use their art. That's why I wouldn't compare AI to photography, because at the end of the day, it's as simple as plagiarism. Just wonder what would have happened with you, if you didn't quote properly anything in your thesis? These artists and authors are not only losing money, but effectively their art too which are generated into another thing. It's ethically wrong, and I wouldn't touch a book with AI cover too.

I really really love the human artists with books. I know when I am reading, I turn to the artwork on the books and just ponder. I SO appreciate the beautiful work.

AI proofreading is also threatening to people who happen to do that work. AI is infact a bane to all creative types. It's fraudulent by design.

If an art student can go to university and part of their education is looking at existing works of art and we don't call it stealing when that art student goes on to make "new" art that is generated at least in part by what that student learned from other peoples art (other people who likely were not compensated for their art at least as far as it's use in that new persons education). The way AI models are trained is quite comparable to this and so it seems very odd to call one stealing and the other not. For now real artists will produce art of a higher quality than what AI does. That will likely change, but people need to adapt. What people will almost certainly exceed in for quite a while is creativity. The "creativity" of the prompt engineers and what they can coax out of the AI models will, I think, lag behind the creativity of real artists. The thing is though that this type of creativity is unlikely to be needed for most art that is created for use with commercial activities and so.... artists feeding themselves with their art is surely going to be a diminishing thing.

Writing is a business and I would bet in the future, if publishers can find salable books written by ai and pay the authors less, this is exactly what they will do. There is no bill of rights for authors and most of this moralism is just reactionary worries.

I am a little shicked. This is the hill people are willing to die on. AI is a tool, and that is very much here to stay. Maybe instead of fighting and canceling people to make ourselves feel superior, maybe we can understand this like all other things is not a black or white argument. If we are going to die on this hill, why are we buying books in the first place since machines and tools took jobs away from bookbinders, or why do we buy clothing from stores since they are not hand knit and the material is not woven by hand?

The claims of this tweet are so hyperbolic, and so obviously false, that I'm not even interested. There are a million issues that are more important.

I have a personal Rage against the Machine. AI is a useful tool but it has the potential to destroy the arts on so many levels. The youth now might lose the drive to create when they can speak a prompt and come up with a clever picture or well-written story. AI also is very good at creating propaganda, to drive narratives where the AI handlers want them to go. Cancel culture has become more today about censorship and compelled ideas and speech than it is about anything else. Oh, except that it's so fun and feels so powerful for the weaklings who wield it to hate.

People are only care about sh*tty AI art (and likewise any art, drawn, painted, or captured in photo). Good art is good art. Bad art is bad art. NO MATTER THE MEDIUM.

Whether or not an author uses AI for their cover art has no bearing in my purchasing decision. I probably couldn't even tell if AI was used. After watching this video, the use of AI art by an author changes nothing for me.

What about artists who study art, watch TV, movies, read magazines, illustrated novels etc .... They use other people's work to inspire them.

I completely agree that the mechanization of books is dehumanizing. That’s why I only read books that were hand copied by monks, with appropriate illuminations, and then bound individually by bookbinder craftsmen. Anything else destroys the soul of the book.

AI is not going anywhere. The Butlerian Jihad says otherwise.

I'm sorry but if someone reads that thread as a threat, it's their conscious accusing them. He is stating the disadvantages of using AI and warning others not to do so. It can't be a threat because he has no power over people buying AI made cover books

The biggest problem that I have with your video is your insistence that AI isn't going anywhere. That's a really defeatist attitude. If enough people boycott it, it will disappear really fast.

Edit: you did a really good job with this video! The fact that Bryce O'Connor went on to insult the other author kind of implies it's a threat. Also, not sure how else to take "this tweet already cost you the chance to work with a lot of great people."

I for one don't care how the cover is generated. Maybe I'm not "supporting" artists, but I'm a realist. AI is here to stay, as you point out. I'm a lawyer and my profession and livelihood is also threatened by AI. I'm not going to whine about it. I'm going to embrace it, adopt it where I can, and make the best of it. I'm not particularly worried that that will harm my reputation.

When AI first became rampant I was genuinely terrified - I write, draw and teach for a living, and chat GPT already does that better! So I'm a little biased 😂 But I think the more I find out about how AI actually works the less scared of it I am. There's a good video by Sabine Hossenfelder about it.

To be honest, my interest in book cover art is limited to like or dislike. I don't think any more about it. I don't like Bryce's tweet because it does read as a threat. The topic of AI is very nuanced. It will not go away anytime soon, so we will have to learn to live with it and adapt. Besides, I think that there's something to be said when an indie author does not have the means to pay for expensive cover art for their book. However, something needs to be done regarding regulations for AI use, so it may be fair for all parties. I do think artists deserve to be protected as well, not replaced. Edited to add: I don't know if the author in question is indie or not. But if he's traditionally published, using AI seems to me like you're just cheap af.