Does the usage of AI for cover bad? why do many say it is?

This is something that I'm meaning to ask for a long time. Why the hell does some people say that they are bad?
I mean we are authors not artists? why does it even matter if we use AI for cover or not?
Like girl...not all of us could afford $300 for a single picture!!
I feel like the people complaining about the use of AI cover are sitting on top of their million-dollar house's balcony and messaging this.
Cuz, that's the vibe they are giving me.
Like, if it's AI made stories then I will be on board with them to oppose it--but covers? really?
I think we all should mind our businesses and read the stories that authors are offering and not to set them back with these foolish comments.

I believe it has to do with the fact that some authors claim that the AI generated image they use for the cover was specifically created by them, and not AI. Not to mention, if you plan on making money off the story, an AI generated cover is a horrible idea, considering AI image generation is trained with real art without permission (i.e. ripped off of Google image or other places where you can download art for free like Twitter/X).

From my experience, most don't care as long as 1, you make it clear that it was AI generated, and 2, you make no money off it.

Oznurturk said:

This is something that I'm meaning to ask for a long time. Why the hell does some people say that they are bad?
I mean we are authors not artists? why does it even matter if we use AI for cover or not?
Like girl...not all of us could afford $300 for a single picture!!
I feel like the people complaining about the use of AI cover are sitting on top of their million-dollar house's balcony and messaging this.
Cuz, that's the vibe they are giving me.
Like, if it's AI made stories then I will be on board with them to oppose it--but covers? really?
I think we all should mind our businesses and read the stories that authors are offering and not to set them back with these foolish comments.

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irs mainly artists complaining since they personally benefit from people not using AI for thumbnails. And they don’t wanna get replaced. Also some issued with ai is that it’s just ugly in a way that AI can only be

The general consensus is that anyone complaining about an AI cover on a book the author isn't making any money off of is an entitled prick who can be safely ignored. But once you either start selling your book on Amazon or trying to get people to sub to you on Patreon, then you need to shell out for a real cover. Every now and then, someone will show up in the forums or on Reddit whining about how using AI for anything is literally murdering artists, but they're just an annoyingly vocal minority that's getting smaller every day.

Author_Riceball said:

irs mainly artists complaining since they personally benefit from people not using AI for thumbnails. And they don’t wanna get replaced. Also some issued with ai is that it’s just ugly in a way that AI can only be

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While there are some truths in this, I want to criticise the absence of more serious reasons like "Those free AIs were trained using arts of real artists without their permission".

It's like paying $0.05 for an ice cream that was stolen from a nearby vendor. It's stolen goods and we should not let this kind of thievery exist.

Also I agree that if you swear on the life of your descendants and all relatives that you will not earn a single monetary benefit from the novel that you use ai cover on, it is ok. As long as no money is involved, the arts can still be allowed under fair use. Otherwise, I hope you will not use ai cover.

Moreover, I hate that people kept making it an artist problem. If ai arts are allowed, what says other ai thievery? Ai voice, ai writing? It should be considered a practice that infringes on human rights, morality and spirit. This should not be considered anything less than war crime or crime against humanity. It is a crime against humanity because it insults and poses a serious threat to human ingenuity and creativity. Bibles, arts, engineering, sciences... every single of them started as ideas from human's creativity. Threatening human creativity is threatening the very lifeline of our species and it should be treated as such. I am appalled at how lightly this issue is treated.

CheertheSecond said:

While there are some truths in this, I want to criticise the absence of more serious reasons like "Those free AIs were trained using arts of real artists without their permission".

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In the real world no one cares about training using the examples of others. It's something that all people do to learn lol

Author_Riceball said:

In the real world no one cares about training using the examples of others. It's something that all people do to learn lol

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The issue is, AI doesn't make things similar to the art, like a human would when trying to learn and then tweaking it to make it unique. It mashes them together to achieve what was prompted, which is what causes the obvious errors in AI generated images.

Basically, it's nothing like a human learning how to create art, but rather forcefully mashing already existing art together, causing typically ugly and horrible images.

hmm...
Well, I'm not earning anything right now but maybe in the future I want to.
So, I just have to switch up my cover for a real one made by an artist?
I mean that's completely fine with me but right now doing that isn't possible.
Also, if the art is AI generated purely by AI--It is not eligible for copyright. correct me if I'm wrong.

The fact that companies are using AI generated advertisements should tell you everything you need to know about where industry thinks the legality of using AI generated images and video is headed. Just like with hand drawn art, there is poor quality AI art as well.

Essentially, as long as the image itself doesn't contain any trademarked or copyrighted characters, then in the US, its considered fair use at this point. Japan has stricter laws on this, and it's a different story.

I can make two arguments as to why you probably SHOULD use AI artwork for your webnovel (unless you want to shell out the big bucks for a high quality artist): First argument is a race to the bottom. You are competing for attention with other novels. No art is worse than poorly drawn human art, which is worse than general AI art, which is worse than high quality human made art. Poorly drawn art costs significantly more than AI art. Thus, the prevalence of AI art for cover art. Second argument comes down to time commitment to payoff ratio for an author. Even if you morally want to pay an artist, it takes a lot of time and effort coordinating with them when you could much more quickly produce a functional cover.

I agree with above people's statements about not using it for a published print book that you sell copies of, if you've reached this point you should probably pay a half-decent artist to produce consistent artwork for the whole book. However, if you're webnovel publishing and collecting money via Patreon or other such sites, AI art is fine (in my opinion).

Moral busybodies can go kick rocks on mixing AI and human stuff pestering authors. Unless the websites themselves ban AI covers, for practical purposes you must use it. If they want to pester websites (or governments) to disallow it, that's fine, as that's the appropriate location. Scribblehub doesn't allow AI generated text content as a comparison. If it similarly didn't allow AI generated cover art, then the formula changes, but it does. That's the gist of it.

I am a graphic artist and come from a family of artists. I use AI as a tool to create art using detailed prompts I have carefully refined from my own creative instincts. I then refine the image using more prompts, created by me. I then take the image into Adobe Photoshop and work on it there until I have a piece I am happy with. Does this not make the final product my art?

If I have a digital image of one of Monet's beautiful landscapes and add a cat, isn't this the same as using AI? No one asked Monet if he wanted a cat in his paintings...It's using his art to create 'new' art through a medium that wasn't available to him. Then selling it. For profit. Isn't this fundamentally the same thing as artists' work being used by humans to train AI?

I see SO many human created images (even here on SH) that are used for book covers, websites and other areas in which someone makes money without licence or permission. 'Oh, I took this from [Insert social photo sharing platform here] - it's not mine - all rights to the owners. Now please support my work on Patreon'. Anything on the Internet that isn't specifically creative commons or the creator has definitively allowed for free commercial use is stealing someone else's work. It's also illegal under copyright law. Just 'cause it's on Pintrest, doesn't make it free to use.

AI is here to stay, whether we like it or not. When it first evolved, as someone whose livelihood could potentially be taken away by it (I am a freelance editor - thanks Grammarly AI, a graphic artist - thanks Midjourney, a professional writer - thanks ChatGTP), I felt a degree of fear and concern. Then I decided that no amount of rage against the machine or fear was going to change the situation and so I embraced it and now use it as a tool instead. Yes, the corporations that used artists' work without permission to train AI were wrong to do so in the first place. But isn't that the way of corporate greed?

If you can claim that you have never reposted or reused an image from the internet that didn't come with specific permission, that you haven't ever used the inbuilt grammar functions in writing programs (which takes away income from editors) then I feel maybe moral high ground can be taken.

AI will never overwhelm human creativity if we refuse to let it. I hope that AI makes the public more appreciative of the effort and emotion that goes into human creation of a piece of artwork, and to hold such works in high esteem and to pay for the privilege of owning such a thing.

This one took me a week of hard work.



And this one took me 10 mins. Be my guest.



AI is a tool. You choose how you want to use it. Most of us are just amateur writers trying to put our stories down. I personally use a hand-drawn cover, but there are many people who can't draw or can't afford an artist for a cover. AI allows anyone to get decent art quickly and easily that they wouldn't be able to otherwise.

Now the story changes when you make the big break and start making money. Then you should definitely hire an artist for your cover and art.

Cause many use it and it looks the same at some point.

Bartun said:

This one took me a week of hard work.

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And this one took me 10 mins. Be my guest.

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AI is a tool. You choose how you want to use it. Most of us are just amateur writers trying to put our stories down. I personally use a hand-drawn cover, but there are many people who can't draw or can't afford an artist for a cover. AI allows anyone to get decent art quickly and easily that they wouldn't be able to otherwise.

Now the story changes when you make the big break and start making money. Then you should definitely hire an artist for your cover and art.

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This AI art is the prime example. That face shape, eyes and pose is often produced by AI and very often used by authors for their covers. People have gotten used to it, and it's not necessarily something that will animate readers to click/read your story. Especially if it's combined with horribly chosen font and color for the title.

And just to clarify, you can also create simple covers with free resources.

Oznurturk said:

Like, if it's AI made stories then I will be on board with them to oppose it--but covers? really?

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Lmao, now you're contradicting yourself. You can't forbid people to complain if you'd do the same.

CodeCrisis said:

I believe it has to do with the fact that some authors claim that the AI generated image they use for the cover was specifically created by them

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The spam bots/scammers roaming around certainly don't give AI a good reputation.

Lol, anyone demanding you NOT use an AI-Generated Cover Image if you plan to monetize your story on Patreon, tell them to kiss your arse. I know several authors who have have used an AI-generated cover image, spent hours getting it just right, and now they make a few thousand dollars on Patreon. One makes almost 9k a month.

I'll be damned if I spend hundreds of bucks for something I can simply generate almost as good, and for free.

You don't owe ANYONE business.

The moralists really need to piss off with this tired nonsense. You're not helping your case, and nobody that's important is listening to you anyways. You're only speeding up your replacement by making people want to spite you.

I'm conflicted about this entire issue.

I was excited about AI at first and the easy ability to have a cover. I became a bit more hesitant when I realized it was writing books. Now I'm starting to see how AI has the power to corpratize, standardize, commoditize, and consume our already beseiged culture if we let it.

Sure, it's not perfect now, but it's going to get better.

If corporate / government owned AI programs cotrol our arts, our music, our movies, our writing, our research, our reporting, our teaching, the what exactly do we exist for?

Perhaps the last and final advantage we'll have is that human works have a passion and soul while AI works tend to standardization and optimization.

But if someone wants to monetize a book with an AI cover, I'm not going to care that much, not yet anyway. They're not selling the cover and they can't even own their cover anyway. It's just a pretty picture for an advertising thumbnail. So long as the book isn't not AI generated writing, I'm fine for as long as I can even distinguish between the two. Just as if I was buying art, and the artist is selling the art, then I don't want AI generated pictures. Would I rather see more human made covers, yes, but I realize people need to use whatever tools are at their disposal to compete as well.

Optics, it's all about optics.

To me as a reader it a discount to your story if your cover is a.i., since its so generic. Plus Ai dont have a sense of what aetheics is or even some basic art theory...so the art is passable but kinda boring... I mean if the cover is boring its not encouraging me to click on it.

As a writer I passionately encourage other writers to make the most boring ass cover possible and also I want everyone to use a.i. covers except me.

Racosharko said:

Optics, it's all about optics.

To me as a reader it a discount to your story if your cover is a.i., since its so generic. Plus Ai dont have a sense of what aetheics is or even som basic art theory...so the art is passable but kinda boring... I mean if the cover is boring it no encouraging me to click on it.

As a writer I passionately encourage other writers to make the most boring ass cover possible and also I want everyone to use a.i. covers except me.

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I'm learning arts so I can make ass versions of all my cover ideas that I used prompts for and gradually improve them. Also made two original covers, not good, but with all the AI covers out there even 'not good' human art is starting to stand out.

This AI art is the prime example. That face shape, eyes and pose is often produced by AI and very often used by authors for their covers. People have gotten used to it, and it's not necessarily something that will animate readers to click/read your story. Especially if it's combined with horribly chosen font and color for the title.

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As I said, AI is a tool. You choose whether to use it or not. As you mentioned, there are many free tools available for creating a cover, and AI is just one of them.

Bartun said:

As I said, AI is a tool. You choose whether to use it or not. As you mentioned, there are many free tools available for creating a cover, and AI is just one of them.

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You should be less reasonable. I want you to be like, "If I catch anyone using AI art for their cover, this dino is coming for them. And they'll have Nowhere to Run!"

Author_Riceball said:

In the real world no one cares about training using the examples of others. It's something that all people do to learn lol

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Just like how no one cares about creationists' books in schools at some places I guess.

JayMark said:

I'm conflicted about this entire issue.

I was excited about AI at first and the easy ability to have a cover. I became a bit more hesitant when I realized it was writing books.

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Just for 's and giggles my husband put one of my PNR novels (written circa 2009) through AI writing detection software. It came back as 90% AI generated, despite the fact it was written by me before the concept of AI being used (it doesn't write books by itself) to write books was even a twinkle in someone's eye. I was horrified and really kinda offended that my carefully crafted and fanatically edited work was so 'precise' it was considered by the software as AI generated. After a while I had a bit of a chuckle and decided AI detection software is a piece of rubbish. But I've kind of wondered ever since...should I leave in the odd typo, lest I be considered a machine? ?