Whether they be fiction books, or TTRPG supplements. You should be particularly disinclined to do that if they are not forthright about using AI prompts. Those people know perfectly well what they are doing.
No names because I don’t have confirmation. But if my suspicions are correct, then I am profoundly disappointed in the company in question. And it will certainly be a consideration when it comes to my future purchases.
Eh. I agree on the second part.
Using MidJourney and the like to generate a base image that the artist refines is a great savings in time (for them) and money (for you).
But if they’re not upfront about what they’re doing, that’s fraud.
MidJourney and the like are not up to creating covers on their own.
But they can iterate a lot of compositions very quickly, and produce backgrounds that need a bit of polish, but are close to usable.
I don’t think AI generated media is ever going to go away. (And neither is big corporations playing fast and loose with other people’s copyrights when it suits them).
However, AI generated art seems to have a rather distinctive look to it (although this will likely be reduced as the technology matures). My general feeling is that a lot of it is still at least a little ways in the uncanny valley.
And my impression is that what gets labeled as “AI” these days might be more correctly called intelligence force multiplier. And there will be places for people with the skills to craft prompts to tease out a result that doesn’t generate a three-armed abomination with soulless eyes
More or less. It’s a tool. It can save a lot of labor in the broad strokes, but it’s not going to create a finished product.
But an example of why the blanket denunciation rubs me the wrong way is Raconteur Press. https://raconteurpress.substack.com/p/and-now-a-word-from-our-publisher
It’s a small press that goes out of its way to act ethically and openly in active defiance of industry norms. But because their artist uses MidJourney to block out the rough draft of their covers, we should avoid them and treat them as hucksters?
I strongly disagree.
Just about anyone using Photoshop* in the last ten years has been using an AI assistant. Ymmv.
Yes yes Abobe leaning into that fact with the latest ToS will curse their Name forever.