In today’s Get Rec’d post, we featured Stars Die by Jenny Schwartz, which is part of a series that many readers, including folks in our community, enjoyed very much.
Unfortunately, we were alerted in the comments that the cover is AI-generated.
I downloaded the cover and ran it through several different scanners. The result: +98% likely it was AI-generated. The cover art is credited to Canva, which offers generative AI to users.
I really dislike generative AI. It stole from me: I’m part of the Anthropic settlement. I also know that gen-AI has scraped the entire website and used it for training. I will receive no compensation for that theft of twenty years of my work. I hate that the Google AI at the top of a search will used the scraped content as a summary, and prevent users from clicking through to discover more, thereby harming my ability to stay in business.
I hate that generative AI harms writers and artists. I hate that it pollutes entire neighborhoods, disproportionately affecting Black communities.
I hate that it destroys our water supply, and sucks up energy and the elements we need to survive in order to provide sub-standard information and images.
I’ve already written about the proliferation of AI-narrators and allegedly AI-written books and the number of titles bought unknowingly by librarians, many of whom would much rather spend their limited budgets on titles written by humans. And I know that more works generated by AI are coming. There is very, very little I can do about it.
Except I can do this: going forward, upon confirmation of AI-generated content, I will remove the buy links and copy copy for any AI-generated book in our database. I will replace AI-generated cover art in our database with an alert that the cover was AI-generated, and that image will accompany the book listing.
I will also replace the cover copy with the following:
The cover copy and buy links for this title have been removed due to the cover being AI-generated art. We do not knowingly promote generative AI material, written or visual, because of the loss of jobs for artists and writers, the toll on local communities and the environment we share, and the predatory theft of copyright materials to fuel and train generative AI models.
We are also humans, and sometimes we don’t catch when something is AI. Thank you for alerting us; this notice will remain to inform others who also want to avoid generative AI books and art.
Here is what that looks like in practice:
That new listing for the book will also appear on the original post, such as in today’s Get Rec’d.
This isn’t fun. I don’t enjoy this, to be clear. This sucks in at least six different ways. As I mentioned, members of the community have enjoyed the series! And we’re literally actually factually in the business of helping people find books they will like.
And I don’t know much about this book except that the cover is 98% likely to be generative AI. Is the book itself generative-AI-written? I have no idea. Can I determine that? Probably I can, but I’m not interested in buying and scanning the book and using my time in that manner.
If the cover is generative AI, that is all I need to know. I don’t want to promote or profit from any work with generative AI on the front or inside.
And, yes, because we’re humans (really truly humans! ask me about my anxiety!) we don’t always catch the gen-AI materials. I’m not great at it; I’m better than I used to be, but I’m not as skilled as other people are.
This is our stance and our response to works produced by generative AI. And this is what we’re going to do going forward here in this little corner of vintage internet run by humans (hi!).
English (US) · 