How acceptable is AI Book covers?

[AliceMoonvale]

I didn't say people weren't allowed to be hypocritical, and nowhere in any of my posts did I ever say people shouldn't be allowed to use AI covers. I've said several times that I understand why people do it. I'm also not saying there's no nuance. Obviously posting a free story with an AI cover isn't as bad as your example. I just think it's hypocritical, depending on the person's reasons for being against writing AI stories.

For example, someone using AI covers complaining about how people shouldn't use AI to write stories because AI was trained off of people's writing are hypocrites, because AI was also trained off of people's art and design work. So under that reasoning, they're throwing artists and designers under the bus because it's more convenient for them to use AI than to stick with their morals. It wouldn't be that hard for them to find a stock image and throw some text on it. But they use AI for making a cover anyway, but still get mad that "AI is training off of stories without the writer's consent." If they're mad about that, then they should also be mad about it doing the same to artists and designers. And even if they are also mad about it doing the same to artists, they're showing they don't care as much as they let on because they're still using it. If they truly cared about AI training off of creators, they wouldn't use it for creating anything. So, they're a hypocrite if they do. That's all I'm saying.

Personally, I think having a good cover being crucial to gaining readers sucks, which is why I personally think sites like this should just not have covers, like on ao3. That way readers can judge off our actual writing, and we won't be wasting our time arguing over the ethics of using AI for a free book.

Yeah, there's some level of contradiction there. I don't think you're wrong to call that out. But where I disagree is the idea that any compromise automatically makes someone's beliefs become moot. I think the reason your argument comes across as tone deaf to me is because it treats any compromise whatsoever as moral invalidation. And honestly, your standard basically leads to “if you participate in something at all, you lose the right to criticize any part of it." Nobody functions like that in reality that I'm aware of.

People compromise on ethical issues constantly because of the obvious practicality, accessibility, or cost. Someone can believe exploitative labor is bad while still buying products made in bad supply chains because they don't realistically have alternatives. That doesn't necessarily mean they secretly don't care.

In a small, barely adjacent example, I still use discord or telegram despite them being terrible apps that don't protect highly vulernable age groups and have their hands dipped in shady dealings. There's unfortunately no decent alternatives I can use that aren't on a smaller scale, that wouldn't require me try and force people to using just for my sake. But it doesn't mean I stopped caring or hating terrible behaviors/practices.

To me, AI covers for free hobby writing fall into a more of a practical compromise category than saying something like: I don't care about artists. Especially when the alternative is having no cover at all which is pure aids, btw. A03 is cancer unless you write popular fanfiction pronz and illegal pronz. Then of course, getting buried by the algorithm completely, or paying money you don't have or settling with just a poorly drawn stick figure cover that nobody will want to click anyway. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

A lot of this discourse like this exists because covers heavily affect visibility, even for free stories. If platforms judged stories more on the writing itself, we'd likely have less insane, incoherent, semi ai-generated, LITRPG smut harem slop floating around. Then people probably wouldn't feel pressured into using AI covers in the first place.

 

[rileykifer]

Yeah, there's some level of contradiction there. I don't think you're wrong to call that out. But where I disagree is the idea that any compromise automatically makes someone's beliefs become moot. I think the reason your argument comes across as tone deaf to me is because it treats any compromise whatsoever as moral invalidation. And honestly, your standard basically leads to “if you participate in something at all, you lose the right to criticize any part of it." Nobody functions like that in reality that I'm aware of.

People compromise on ethical issues constantly because of the obvious practicality, accessibility, or cost. Someone can believe exploitative labor is bad while still buying products made in bad supply chains because they don't realistically have alternatives. That doesn't necessarily mean they secretly don't care.

In a small, barely adjacent example, I still use discord or telegram despite them being terrible apps that don't protect highly vulernable age groups and have their hands dipped in shady dealings. There's unfortunately no decent alternatives I can use that aren't on a smaller scale, that wouldn't require me try and force people to using just for my sake. But it doesn't mean I stopped caring or hating terrible behaviors/practices.

To me, AI covers for free hobby writing fall into a more of a practical compromise category than saying something like: I don't care about artists. Especially when the alternative is having no cover at all which is pure aids, btw. A03 is cancer unless you write popular fanfiction pronz and illegal pronz. Then of course, getting buried by the algorithm completely, or paying money you don't have or settling with just a poorly drawn stick figure cover that nobody will want to click anyway. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

A lot of this discourse like this exists because covers heavily affect visibility, even for free stories. If platforms judged stories more on the writing itself, we'd likely have less insane, incoherent, semi ai-generated, LITRPG smut harem slop floating around. Then people probably wouldn't feel pressured into using AI covers in the first place.

Yeah, I agree there. There's plenty of things out there I disagree with but get stuck participating in anyway. It's just to me, AI isn't a necessity, and we were all getting along fine without it a few years ago. So I get slightly annoyed when I see people passionately stating all the reasons it's wrong, but still use it for something. Mainly, I just hate that we're all stuck in this position where we have to have good covers or else we won't get readers so people end up caving in on using it. What's worse is people who use AI for a cover have an advantage over people who don't, so that makes people feel like they need AI to make a cover, and it's started this vicious cycle where everyone's using AI covers and anyone who doesn't gets screwed over. It sucks for all of us.

 

[AliceMoonvale]

Yeah, I agree there. There's plenty of things out there I disagree with but get stuck participating in anyway. It's just to me, AI isn't a necessity, and we were all getting along fine without it a few years ago. So I get slightly annoyed when I see people passionately stating all the reasons it's wrong, but still use it for something. Mainly, I just hate that we're all stuck in this position where we have to have good covers or else we won't get readers so people end up caving in on using it. What's worse is people who use AI for a cover have an advantage over people who don't, so that makes people feel like they need AI to make a cover, and it's started this vicious cycle where everyone's using AI covers and anyone who doesn't gets screwed over. It sucks for all of us.

Amen. And at the end of the day, I don't think all ai use deserves to be treated as morally identical.

Especially if you think about the 'AI was trained on the work of creators' argument . That it only makes solid sense when we look at the corporations who are mass-replacing artists/writers, flooding storefronts with generated slop, or directly profiting off imitation at an industrial scale. That's where the real job replacement and exploitation concern is. One I definitely can't get behind at all, cause it's cringe as fuck.

But, I personally can't put that same moral dilemna on hobbyist writers like myself who use ai art as a placeholder, as a spellchecker, or even for brainstorming/research/reference help. 'Cause when I try, it feels very disproportionate. It reminds me of when I was told as a kid, to make sure I ate all my dinner because there's starving kids in Africa. Because somehow me not wanting to eat peas will affect people on a global scale.

Whether we like it or not, ai is the fancy new globally available tool that people will complain about, and others will use. It's the same song and dance that's happened with every new advancement in techology. Just like how with photoshop, it can be used for normal editing or malicious fake images. Cars can be used for transportation or to hurt people. (I've actually been run over before, very fun). The existence of a tool relies heavily on the user's own responsibility.

And honestly, artists and writers have always learned from existing work. Humans study styles, references, anatomy, composition, prose structure, tropes, etc. Hell, you even got people try to learn or copy from those in trending on the site to try and game the algorithm. Though, AI obviously isn't identical to human learning, but people sometimes act like inspiration and pattern learning itself suddenly became immoral once software did it. It's a bit silly and that's where I find a lot of hypocrisy.

Ultimately, one of the core problems is like you mention, the environment that pressures people into using these tools in the first place outside of simple convenience. If visibility and click-through rates are heavily tied to flashy covers, then of course people are going to use these tools available to compete. It's a shame, but we can't reverse society unfortunately.

But Idk, has anyone tried turning it on and off again?