this one gets permanent NetNanny because it's where the leftist posters fled to. you will never get a corporate social media platform for this kind of user base that is not under permanent NetNanny rule. but the richest people in the world can spin up StormFront 3.0 with unlimited funds, no problem.

Yes I saw the process post, and it does look weird and incomplete.

My impression when I saw it was that there could have been traced references or something (which could be its own can of worms depending on several factors but not necessarily AI).

But I'm not really here to prove it is or isn't.

In short, I just think dramatically knocking off points from a book review because the cover *might* be AI generated when the author presumably explicitly commissioned a non-AI cover is a bit much.

But mostly, I find some of the commentary (not yours, the original thread) off-putting because it implies things about the author I think are unfair and reputation-damaging. Even IF it turns out the artist used AI, my opinion is still the same. People get scammed by AI images all the time.

I've already seen some cases where people posted their own art and were blindsided with a bunch of AI accusations because they missed some lines or couldn't get the hands right; people like saying "an artist wouldn't have done that," as if every artist has the same training and experience level.

I will be fully honest that I don't like the art on this cover. There are a lot of things going on that I would have personally done more work on.

Could it be AI? Sure. Maybe a timelapse would help. But I think we also forget that humans also make mistakes and weird artistic decisions.

I'm not saying it absolutely isn't, but you are playing with an author's reputation, and if it turns out to have been AI, that probably means she was scammed.

Do you have any actual evidence?

I also think it's really fucked that they are implying the AUTHOR is lying about AI with their book disclaimer. If the cover IS generated, that means the author was scammed, which is something I've definitely seen happen to other authors.

I'm focusing on hands both because it's The Thing people talk about in AI images, and also because the hands in the image look weird and I think that was the initial thing that is causing people to be suspicious.

I was in an art group where somebody posted a piece of fanart she drew and people ganged up on her saying it was AI. She wanted to know why.

In her case, she just couldn't get the hang of hands. It didn't really LOOK like AI in my opinion, she just struggled with hands, such are famously hard.

In those pile-ons, people have commented things like "a human wouldn't have made this decision" or "a human would have known better than to make this mistake," but while these are potential tells...... yes, humans do sometimes make those decisions and make those mistakes.

To be clear: I have seen cases where people have paid "artists" to make covers, explicitly requesting no AI, and getting AI. I am not saying that absolutely couldn't have happened here, I don't know this author or the cover artist.

But I've also seen pile-ons over stuff that was not AI.