Intelligence

(AI) in Publishing and Cover Art

By: S.L. Carpenter

Browsing the newest books lined up on the shelves of my local bookstore always makes me happy. There are only so many books in print these days, and to be displayed there is an honor.

Being both an author and a cover artist, I’ll look at books for a variety of reasons. Recognizing print books by some of the authors I know is exciting, and even though a lot are new to me, it’s every bit as fun to see. As for the art, I look at all the beautiful covers being done nowadays.

Our world of words and pictures has been going through some amazing changes lately. The cover colors are vibrant, the stories and characters are all perfect, and everything looks so Ilawless. Part of that might well be because one of the newest changes in style involves AI art. What is AI art?

digital tools and a computer for paints and canvas.

Don’t get me wrong, the artists that create these software programs are very talented, but as amazing as it is, there are always some who will take shortcuts. For example, they may take an existing photo or piece of art and run it through a program, altering it just enough to make it their own. This is not a good thing.

I really love the characters and things that AI can do, and today we see it everywhere. It’s all over the internet which can be challenging because it’s getting harder to differentiate between a real person or a computer generated one. It would make things interesting, trying to describe your new girlfriend to your parents only to Iind out she wasn’t real. That could cause a lot of awkward situations when you announce your engagement...

I’m not anticipating global disaster, but in reality, it’s a scary thing for creative people to deal with. The threat of a computer creating something you would have done a year ago is a little disturbing, to say the least.

For anyone who’s not familiar with the term, ArtiIicial Intelligence art includes any, particularly images and music compositions, created through the use of artiIicial intelligence (AI) software and programs, for example, text-toimage internet programs, and musical generators. It can be confused with digital art but shouldn’t be, since digital art is created by a human, substituting

Then there’s the matter of kids having AI software do their homework. I kind of wish I had it in high school because I hated writing papers or breakdowns on classic books, not to mention those essays about how I felt about ethics in college. Now, the Sex Studies course, however, would have been a cool experiment with AI – asking it to describe the human sexual elements in literature and movies. When I think of all that research I had to do... probably explains why I did well in that college class.

That’s for another article.

I have been reading quite a lot about the AI advances, and it’s creepy to realize they can write a romance novel of 50,000 words in about Iive minutes, with perfect spelling, grammar, and punctuation. A user simply tells the program the plot of a romance about a cowboy, a well-to-do female seamstress, and their ranch in Texas then... POOF… instant story.

Still not sure if the computers will have a good sense of humor though. I’m not sure they understand the amusing results of over-indulging in Mexican food, or the classic banana peel slip up. Then there are the quirks in the English language that make people laugh. Can AI write comedy at all without that touch of humanity?

I did enjoy a lot of Science Fiction as a kid, and it really made me imagine so much. I look at what’s happening now and think, “Those nerds I adored must have been time travelers.” So many things they wrote about that sounded impossibly crazy back then are coming true. Now I’m getting depressed. Looks like I’ll be replaced by a machine someday in the not too distant future, and it might be the same machine that will be able to write a perfect story, design a perfect cover for the book, then promote and send it to the masses… Probably get a movie deal, shoot the movie without any real actors, directors, or producers complaining about cost cuts.

It will be released over the summer and make millions, and the machine will be programmed to write 12 more novels with the same deal. It’s possible, of course, that people will get jealous and sue for copyright infringement and stealing the plot of the story they wrote back in 1987. After the dust settles, everyone will be rich and miserable because of the experience. And all of this will take only 45 minutes with AI because it’s so fast.

I’m exaggerating a lot, but there is no question that the world is moving so fast, we all need to take a breath and catch up.

As I wonder about the whole artiIicial intelligence topic, I have been asked by some people what my personal thoughts are as an author and artist. My answer is I do see some differences I feel readers may pick up on.

When it comes to cover art, that’s an easy one. The eyes. For me, it’s always the eyes. Although I like watching Pixar movies and looking at the computergenerated art, all you have to do is look into the eyes to see there is no soul. No soul, no life. It may sound corny, but that’s what I see and what I believe.

The AI writing question might well have the same issues. It will be able to crank out books faster and easier than any author, beyond a shadow of a doubt, but readers are accustomed to picking up on the mannerisms, quirks, and Ilaws in the characters they’re engaging with.

People are nuanced beings, and more often than not, a mess of emotions. We are never really sure what we want and say the dumbest things. (Trust me; I say some really crazy stuff.) Life isn’t clean or simple, and when we write stories, we automatically include those small differences, and yes, our characters make mistakes.

I’m not sure if AI-written books can reproduce things like that, because they aren’t real people. They are whatever they are told to be. In other words, they’re only as good as the person who created them. And if that person isn’t a writer?

As a footnote though, when they become able to think independently and act on human emotions, that’s going to be a whole new ballgame which may not be as far off as we might think. It might be time to summon the Terminator, or Neo, or even Deckard... to make sure everything isn’t lost in time like “tears in the rain...”

By: Tamara Cribley