Jill's Book CafeAI, or not AI, that is the question.
Or, in a world where it’s increasingly difficult to believe anything we read or see as being real and not faked, what is the answer? When AI was in it’s infancy it was easy to spot the faked images – the missing hands or the seven fingers were an easy giveaway. As techniques have become more sophisticated it’s not such an easy spot, and it’s largely the images and the adverts that have been attracting my attention of late. More specifically in relation to the book world. The glossy facebook videos of chiselled heroes and the proliferation of look alike bookish promos are hide to avoid. We’ve all seen them and possibly not even thought about them, but just scrolled by. However, it was an animation/video I spotted promoting the latest book for an author that I read that got me thinking. Along with several bookish threads on, not unsurprisingly, Threads, relating to the proliferation of AI romance books on Amazon.
As many of you know, I read a lot of romance, and a lot of American/Canadian indie authors who participate in the Kindle Unlimited programme. Many are complaining that the space is being flooded by AI written works that are ultimately a)reducing their royalties and b) proliferating poorly written, faked works which reflects badly on everybody. One ‘author’ under fire is currently sitting in the number 1 spot for firefighter romance and 217 in the whole Kindle store. The ‘author’ who has no bio on Amazon, ‘writes’ each book with another similarly bio less author. The firefighter romance is one in a series of 72, and her other series encompasses 144 books. All of the covers are AI generated and the content is believed to be similarly created. The worrying thing is that these books are garnering large numbers of positive reviews – whether they are all legitimate readers is unlikely. The belief is that they are bot generated reviews. However, on a platform such as Kindle Unlimited where the reader has already paid for a subscription to be lulled into reading a book with fake reviews is not costing them anymore, is generating income for the ‘author’ and taking readers and income away from legitimate authors.
We are all aware of authors having had their hard work stolen to create writing programmes. Even myself along with other bloggers are aware of our blogs having been trawled by bots. To what end in my case I’m not sure, but the stats are revealing. My views have been growing over time, as one would expect with regular posts. On average I’d normally expect between 5,000 to 6,000 views per month, this ties in with my 70,000 view total for 2024. Last year, my posts were more hit and miss, especially in the latter part of the year and yet my views jumped to 141,000. In November and December alone my views were 83,000 – all largely from China. This year, when my output has also been limited my views are currently standing at 143,000, already more than last year. This time it seems to be the Americans that are interested. What I do know is that these are not views from legitimate readers and the posts that are being read are largely posts like this, the opinion pieces or personal text based features rather than the Five on Friday or book round ups. Though if they’re using my posts to help train AI God help them. I’m the first to admit my grasp of grammar is shocking.
So with all that said, back to the matter in hand AI generated artwork. My main gripe is while the writing community is, quite rightly, up in arms about AI created books they appear to be less concerned by AI created artwork and ads. To me, this seems like hypocrisy because they are two sides of the same coin. You can’t object to someone stealing your creative work to profit from and then use AI generated work which has effectively stolen someone else’s creativity. Unfortunately, with respect to cover artwork, the water has been further muddied by authors who have, in good faith, employed cover artists to produce their artwork, only to discover the designer has ‘copied’ or redrawn an AI created image. My answer to this has been to decide to avoid authors who are using AI to advertise their work, whether that being as cover art or in adverts and promos. But, I go back to what I said earlier. I can’t always tell whether it is AI or not. Also, particularly with romance novels, the proliferation of cartoony covers and non pictoral images makes it even harder. With some authors and readers also making a similar point about AI generated artwork being contradictory wouldn’t it be nice to see the designers credited at the front of the book so that readers could easily check. With some of the modelled covers, many readers will recognise those taken by Wander Aguiar, who is himself also a cover model. Those covers are always attributed as he, quite rightly, merits the acknowledgement. Why are we not doing this as standard for all cover artwork. I can’t see that authors would have a problem and I as a reader would appreciate not having to guess. Having found the above advert for Pixazo, a website offering free book covers I’m already questioning some cover art on books I own as now being AI. It’s also a slippery slope, if you can’t trust what’s on the outside, what about the legitimacy of the written word inside.
I know we’ll all have different views on AI. Just as I am not a fan and would like to avoid it, there are others that welcome it as a useful tool. I also appreciate that for many struggling indie authors an AI cover seems like a gift, but it’s ultimately drawn (excuse the pun) from the collective work of other artists. Whatever side you are on, I’d just appreciate some honesty and transparency. Those happy to use it, shouldn’t be ashamed to admit it, and if they are then I’d question why. Those who are opposed to AI I’m sure would like to see all creative work credited and their own credibility upheld.
On a more sober note, if the above didn’t give pause for thought, bear in mind the cost of AI to the climate. It’s reported that by 2030 AI could use as much water as 1.3 billion people as it’s used for cooling the data centres. In artwork terms alone an AI image uses 1-2 litres of water per generation. Please let us just be mindful and above all honest.
PS In writing this I have also refused the WordPress offer to ‘improve with AI’. I want my work to be mine, flaws and all.
#AI #bookCoverArt #BookCovers #bookPromo #integrity
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