With all the AI madness that’s been going on, I’ve been thinking a lot about transparency. People have a right to know if they are reading human-created books—if they’re partaking of human-created art.
How do we define this, though?
Let’s figure that out.
What is art?
As I continually attempt to wrap my brain around all this AI stuff, I’m reminded of when Photoshop, photobashing specifically, was looked down on. I used to be against it myself, because I didn’t see it as real art. But before we get into that, let’s define what photobashing is so that we’re on the same page.
- Photobashing is a form of digital art created by compositing stock photos in Photoshop. It’s more than that, though, as it often includes many other elements like 3D assets and digital painting. In essence, I would say it’s creating something new from things that already exist.
I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, I believed wholeheartedly that art had to come from my head, or it wasn’t art. I didn’t even like using references—though that’s something basically every artist will tell you to do, and for good reason. Even when we create something without staring at a reference, we’re still referencing something, because everything we know comes from the information we’ve collected by living. You can’t draw something you’ve never seen.
When I started publishing in 2015, photobashing was perfectly acceptable and widely used for book cover art. It’s flexible; it works for any genre. Photobashing is how I create my book covers. I swallowed the bitter pill, tried it myself, and came to find an appreciation for photobashed art. You can give two artists the same stock photos, and you’ll end up with different pieces—visions unique to them. Art.
I’m not against photobashing anymore, but I’d prefer my process to involve more painting and less photobashing. It’s purely personal preference; I think paintings look cool. Unless I’m able to paint the exact style expected for a genre, however, it’s not a good idea from a business standpoint. Readers don’t expect a cute cartoon character on a sprawling epic fantasy, for example. They respond better to a photobashed book cover that looks more realistic.
Why don’t I just commission amazing painters whose styles match whatever genres, then? Money. It’s simply not feasible for me at this point in my career, so I create my book covers.
Some people might be thinking I have a third option, that I could use AI to create book covers. To that I say no. I’ve been rather appalled by what I’ve seen of AI-generated art. Especially when it’s been trained—without permission—on a specific artist’s style. Selling that art is unethical. If an artist signed a contract, agreed to train an AI and was okay with whatever it produced being sold, then that would be something else, but as of now, I want nothing to do with AI-generated art.
Now let’s look at that from a different angle by returning to my earlier comment about using (or not using) references when drawing. If I draw a fox without a reference, I can come up with something that looks like a fox. How? Because I’ve seen foxes before. I’ve also drawn foxes from references before (because I use references a lot these days)—but only from copyrighted photos. I can’t think of a single person who would tell me I should have gotten permission before I used those photos to practice drawing foxes, and yet people, myself included, don’t like the fact that AI has been trained on information scraped from the internet.
Why does this bother us so much when it seems an awful lot like an AI “learns” the same way we do?
The biggest difference between human art and AI-generated whatever must be the living aspect. Yes, I’ve sketched foxes from photos, but my art is going to be touched by my life experiences. My books are inspired by other books, games, and movies, but they’ve been colored by my life. I only know what I know, right? What I take away from reading a book may not even be what the author intended. I have feelings, emotions, and an AI doesn’t.
Heart is the essence of art.
Does AI have a place in art?
This is another loaded question, but let’s explore it and the potentially black, white, and gray areas of using AI in art.
Black and white?
- This book was written by AI.
- This book was written by a human.
Dark gray and light gray?
- This book was written by AI, but a human edited it heavily.
- This book was written by a human, but it was heavily edited by AI.
True gray?
- This book was written by a human, but the audiobook is narrated by AI.
I think AI can have a place in art. I went back and forth on Google’s auto-narrated audiobooks but eventually decided to produce a few. Rather than repeat myself, I’ll point you to a blog post I wrote to explain that decision: My current thoughts on AI narrated audiobooks…
I’ll clarify here, however, by saying that I don’t consider the AI narration itself art. I’m using it because it makes these books accessible, available in audio, when they otherwise wouldn’t be.
I have no interest in reading a novel written by an AI because it’ll be a regurgitated remix of everything it’s been trained on—and it won’t have any heart. I have no interest in an AI doing story-level edits either. Again, what does it know? It has no heart. When I use Grammarly while doing copyedits, its AI can be helpful, but I don’t mindlessly make the changes it tells me to.
What tools do I use to make art?
To be as transparent as possible, I’m going to list my creative processes so you can see where/if I use AI and how I use it.
Book Covers
- Stock Photos: Because I have no way of verifying if AI-generated stock photos were ethically made, I strive not to use them. I use the word strive because unless a photo has been labeled as AI generated, I may not be aware. Regardless, I’ll be doing my best to avoid them. If I used an AI-generated image in one of my covers and am made aware, I will create a new cover.
- Photoshop: I have Photoshop CS6, so AI isn’t even an option.
- Clip Studio: This is my preferred drawing/painting software! No AI.
Writing/Editing
- Scrivener: As far as I know, Scrivener only has basic spellcheck.
- Google Search: I use Google when doing research. Its AI Overview is turned on, which can provide a helpful summary of the thing I searched, though I don’t take what it says as fact.
- ChatGPT: I use ChatGPT for a variety of things, but it does NOT write or even edit my books. It’s extremely helpful when I can’t remember a word, or don’t know the word for something but can explain what that something is. I like asking it to explain grammar rules then checking that against a Google search. It can give me basic summaries of places or concepts and therefore help me figure out specifically what I need to research. Sometimes I’ll throw a random sentence at it to see if it thinks I’m using a word correctly. Once again, I don’t take what it says as fact. I am writing fiction, but I like what I’m writing to at least be plausible.
- Word: Word’s editor is AI. I go through its suggestions when editing, which usually amounts to nothing more than finding missing words, fixing typos, and other little things.
- Grammarly: Like word, Grammarly uses AI, and I use it when editing. I go through its suggestions, which usually amounts to nothing more than finding missing words, fixing typos and, other little things.
Audiobooks
- Cubase: Cubase is a music production software. I use it to record myself, edit, and ultimately produce audiobooks that are narrated by me, a human.
- SpectraLayers: SpectraLayers is an advanced spectral audio editor. I use its AI to significantly reduce the noise floor in my recordings.
- De-Clicker: I use a de-clicker to automatically get rid of most of the clicks in my recordings.
- WaveLab: WaveLab is an audio mastering software, which I use to master my human-narrated audiobooks.
- Auto-Narrated Audiobooks: While I don’t anticipate creating AI-narrated audiobooks for any of my future publications (as I want to narrate them myself), I have used Google’s auto-narrated audiobooks tool to create a few for some of my older books.
Music
I used to play with Vocaloid and UTAU, but it’s been years since I’ve done that. You may have heard me sing, though, and if I get back into sharing music, I’m sure I’ll sing again. Cubase is the tool I use to record and edit. While that is me singing, I do use pitch correction tools to polish my performance. When I write music, like Troubled Pines, I use VST samplers like HALion.
Marketing
- Stock Photos
- Photoshop
- ChatGPT: I use ChatGPT more extensively in my marketing. While I still need to write at least a single blurb for any book I write (because no way in heck am I feeding ChatGPT one of my books), that single blurb is usually enough for ChatGPT to assist me in writing blurb variations. The reason I do this is so I can test which blurbs resonate with readers more. I’m still doing heavy edits and/or have the final say. Likewise, I’ll use that blurb to have ChatGPT help me write ad copy, which goes through the same process.
- Word
- Grammarly
I will update this page as/if things change.
Last updated 1/18/2025.
