Do you care if a book has an AI-based (art) cover?

[Aglaea]

On various sub-Reddits for reading such as r/RomanceBooks and others, people are very anti-AI book cover (and text). To the point that they will blacklist and refuse to read the author for using an AI cover (even if the text is 100% human written). And there are often discussions on if a cover used AI or not.

Some of the reasons on Reddit that people give are:
- AI art uses and steals from real, legit artists - it also takes away from their ability to do a job and be paid
- AI art is weird looking and bothers them
- If an author uses AI for a cover, they wonder if the text is also using AI to be created and they don't want to read fake, AI written books

There are others reasons, but these are the main ones I see.

Many in those discussion spaces, suggest complaining to publishers, returning books (doesn't really apply here for most of us LOL) and things like that. They want authors and publishes to know not to use AI at all, or else face the consequences. But I am not sure how much the people on these spaces represent, and if the average person going to a store would even know or care. So not sure if their actions will mean anything, especially with big name publishers.


I was curious what readers on here think. Does it matter to you?

[abbylynn]

To tell you the truth! I really can't tell the different if a book or book cover is AI. (Or I just don't look close enough to see the mistake on the cover) I'm sure that there will have a lot of people that will be angry that some authors are using AI, and it would seem that AI is taking over the world. It doesn't bother me as long as the book is good as my problem is more at finding books that are written in third person since that's all I like to read. There are not that many authors out there that are writing in third person that writes the type of books that I like to read. I mean, yea, don't get me wrong. I wouldn't want an author to use AI but I'm also going to keep an open mind and read new and old authors if their books are good and written in third person.

[Helopoh]

I feel like AI is a tool that can be used to present an author with a suggestion of what a cover would look like if it was drawn the way they directed it to. You can plug all the keywords you want and it spits out a picture. That should be where AI ends. This is where you take your AI picture and find someone who can make that image better and give it emotion and depth. There are hundreds of artists that would love to put their talent to use. This helps them also add to their portfolio for future reference. I know a lot of times it is a financial decision for authors but there are so many inexpensive resources like, High School/College Art Students. If your book gets big and that student now has a huge foot in the door for other work. Using AI is robbing the creative community out of jobs. If we allow AI to run things we are going to have huge unemployment numbers. I don't think we will see that immediately but if we don't regulate it I can see it being a big negative in our lives. I don't really care if an author uses AI as long as their work is their own. Everyone has to make their own choices.