AI as artwork (article) by Todd Cheney on AuthorsDen

Is AI art already better? How about AI writing?

Full knowledge disclosure: I use AI in book covers and cover copy only. And I only do this because I can't afford to pay for it. If I had the means to pay editors, cover artists and copywriters, I would, and I have in the past. It's just that I don't have that really. How am I supposed to shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars on something? I don't have that kind of money. AI for me, just fills the gaps.

That being said, I am worried about AI writing. What I've seen from interacting with AI through gemini and chatGPT is that their responses are perfunctory at best. Great writing is not perfunctory, it's passionate, it's mysterious and it moves the heart and mind. How is an AI supposed to move the heart and the mind if 'under the hood' it has neither? I don't know that it can.

Because AI's learn from Large Language Models, which are really just collections of content already produced in a language (such as English, Spanish, etc.), the novels or writing they come up with is based on all of this. But it's not filtered through the heart, or the emotions, or the brain, because AI doesn't have those things. So I don't think it can be good enough. I think AI needs to come with a warning label like we got with music and we have with movies, and so on. It should just say: "AI was used to generate..." and then list the parts of the story or product. This will help to discern between what's real and what's not. So in the case of my books, maybe I should say inside the cover flap something like "The cover and backcopy for this novel was generated using Gemini AI. If I had more money to pay a cover artist, I would". In fact, maybe I will say that.

Reviewed by La Belle Rouge Poetess Of The Heart

Reviewed on March 28, 2025

Todd, this is a wonderful article. Like you, I only use AI for covers and illustrations. I know there is nothing dishonest in doing this but I do not use it in writing. I can't help but wonder that in the near future there will only be AI written books, poety, articles and the creativity, emotions and voices of real writers will be disregarded and undeveloped because of AI. Humanity will suffer if this happens. Thanks for writing this, it needs to be said.

Reviewed by Aberjhani

Reviewed on November 16, 2024

Enjoyed this article. It says a lot about the choices creatives are having to make these days between ease and efficiency versus human-to-human collaborations or partnerships. In short, it says a lot about human values.

Generative AI can be a useful tool in the kind of financial and professional situation you describe. Some who can afford to pay for the publishing services you noted have intentionally used AI-generated art to make a point about its effectiveness. AI art is good at �filling gaps� exactly as you and many others have described. Because it is artificial intelligence as opposed to human intelligence, it automatically lacks the quality of what some might call the essence of what it means to be human, such as any visual evidence of striving to accomplish a specific creation, or a subtle flaw that gives the work a kind of paradoxical value.

In regard to text, OpenAI cautions that generated text is prone to errors. Experimental texts generated for my AI Literary Chat Salon have all required rigorous human editing. For myself, I would not be inclined to trust such texts completely for the reasons you stated and for others as well.