AI Conundrum

At some point I'm going to finish another book. At that point, I'll need editing, cover art, possibly interior graphics. I am rethinking the latter slightly and may use a different layout for the next "Fox" books, but anyhow.

How can I tell that I'm not getting AI back?

Okay, already there was a big problem with editors and art and similar labor-intensive book services, and that was vendors geared towards providing a product. Their business model is not based on them understanding the needs of your book, but instead doing something of sufficient quality that you will pay them for it.

Can you get SEO advice from someone who actually knows the SF field? Can you get editing from someone who understands the peculiarities of historical fiction?

I pushed a little with my cover and interior artists; instead of sending them a reference image, I'd describe it in art-student terms; "...like a Toulouse-Lautrec cabaret poster."

On places like Reedsy and Fiverrrrrr, you don't even know if you are talking to the artist, or if you don't share a language and they are shoving your order into Google Translate. That makes revisions awkward, and rarely productive, as well.

Well, AI has made this distinctly worse. Even if there is a human hand holding the pen, you know that the person handling orders at the Art "R" Us you are contracting with just fed whatever you said into ChatGPT and asked it to spit out whatever it is they could do in an afternoon with a stock image site.

Not only do they not know anything about theory, history, or tradition of art, they've a business model that makes it so these things do not matter. They can get a result that gets them paid. Bottom line.

Which by the by over just the years since I published the last book have been so overrun with AI generated "stock" they barely even bother to identify it anymore. All of their efforts are to cash in by offering their own AI implementation for your needs.

Well, actually, most of them are going out of business. It has become much more difficult to get the typical stock that was used in so many book covers over the last few decades.

But there is still a moral and possible a legal ground as well. KDP stops you at several points during upload for a self-published manuscript for you to declare if you have used AI. As of the moment, this doesn't matter. But it could change in a moment, and every trend in the market suggests it will not change in a way that is good for those who declared.

The best outcome is that Amazon unveils their own AI engines, and declares their legal department has determined you must pay the extra charges to have their AI used on your work instead. Which contract by the by will also require permission to use your work for training data. No, I haven't heard any rumors of this. But KDP is so far from hurting for more books, they could easily dump all of the self-published works that used AI, probably without hurting their bottom line in the slightest.

How can I find these editors and artists now? What protection do I have that even a well-meaning person who I have contracted with before isn't feeling the crunch as real artists are being crushed under cheap AI crap, and is forced to sign with that devil in order to pay their own bills?

None.