I once posted about the ugliest book covers I own. Even those are so much better than the deluge of horrible covers made with AI, which are all over Amazon, Netgalley and probably many other places if I cared to look. Actually, those covers I posted about now look quite pleasing to me. If books are old, even just a few years old, then AI most certainly did not feature in the cover design.

I now judge a book by its cover, not only to work out if it’s the kind of genre I would read, but as an indication of the author or publisher’s quality and ethics. If the cover is quite obviously made with AI, I’m going to assume that the writing is AI. Even if it’s 100% human written and it may be a great story, you’ve gone for the easier, cheaper, visually disturbing option of artificially generated art, instead of paying a human to use their own creativity and talent, or create a cover yourself if you’re into art and graphic design… so I’m not going to read your book.

I have never, as far as I’m aware, read or promoted any book which has used AI for creative purposes. Depending how the industry develops, I worry that at some point, it will be unavoidable and I’ll either be unaware, or be unable to tell the difference. If only we could turn back time and stop the technology being released to everyone.