A fantasy novel is in the middle of a controversy with its cover, apparently generated by artificial intelligence, or AI, receiving criticism from artists and readers alike.
What Happened: A controversy has erupted in the publishing world after a popular fantasy novel featured a cover seemingly generated by AI, prompting backlash from artists and readers, reported The Verge.
According to the report, readers noticed that the U.K. edition of Sarah J. Maas' "House of Earth And Blood" credited Adobe Stock for the illustration of a wolf on its cover, which was found to match an image labeled as AI-generated on Adobe's website, created by a user, ‘Aperture Vintage.'
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This has led to criticism directed at Maas and Bloomsbury Publishing, a leading independent publishing house. Freelance artist Kala Elizabeth tweeted, "Using adobe stock created by an AI generator that steals from hard working artists, while also avoiding paying a real illustrator is abhorrent."
Elizabeth added, "Bloomsbury is one of the major publishing houses. They CAN afford to hire real illustrators instead of purchasing Adobe stock, which is where this AI content is from."
On Reddit, one user wrote, "Not sure if people have seen this about the new Crescent City covers for certain countries. Considering SJM has rules in place to stop people profiting from AI-generated fan art, it's disappointing that the latest covers are in fact AI generated and using other people's art."
Another Redditor added, “Like it or not, sooner or later, most, if not all design, will be done by AI. Much cheaper and faster.”
Why It Matters: The use of AI-generated artwork on book covers has intensified concerns among artists that publishers may replace them with text-to-image generators like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion.
This is not the first time a publisher has come under fire for using AI-generated artwork on their covers. According to the report, last year, after unintentionally using an AI-generated cover art for Christopher Paolini's book "Fractal Noise," Tor Books had to apologize.
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