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jscalzi@threads.net ("John Scalzi") wrote:

It infuriates me that from now until the end of fucking time, when an artist turns in a piece of amazing artwork for a book cover, some flatulating midwit will look at it and say "oh, that's just AI."

The absolutely amazing cover for Monsters of Ohio, by Michael Koelsch, which features a Chthulu-like created having its groceries rung up at the supermarket. And they have coupons!
Me responding to someone saying the cover is "AI": It is absolutely not "AI." One, the artist is Michael Koelsch, who has been working for years, and who has done covers for two of my previous books. He doesn't need "AI" to make a cool cover. He has actual talent. Two, I have it in my contracts that my covers are created by humans. My publisher would be in breach of contract to use a generative "AI" cover. Three, the "overall idea" of the cover is mine -- Koelsch was given a brief on the book and did sample designs for us to look at, and this was the one we approved. In fact, I was so delighted at one of the details Koelsch added in (the coupons!) that I made sure to include it in the text. Bear in mind that perhaps the reason this cover may look "AI" to you is that "AI" has been trained on work stolen from thousands of artists like Koelsch. You're just adding insult to injury when you dismiss actual human work as "looking like 'AI'" when it's the "AI" that's plagiarizing artists.