"AI Designed Book Jacket" Topic

What the holy hell is this garbage? Is there a single detail right in this image? Saw it at B&N the other day.

link

I hate AI "generated" art with a passion. The real problem here though is that a human looked at this and said, "Yeah that's good enough". And someone spotted how bad the crotch on backwards looked so they put the text over it to hide it.
The authors, who seem to have written a number of books on the subject, would likely be horrified.

It certainly would be an appropriate cover for an AI-generated book on Napoleon, and such a thing can't be far off if not already on sale. The first thing AI is being put to use for is to generate minimal effort "content" for lazy people looking to make a quick buck. There's going to be a sea of sludge to wade through for a while. For me, if a person didn't write/draw/paint it, I'm not interested.

i agree clibinarium, a execrable cover and you just come away with the feeling that the text is probably not going to be much better

AI art has its uses- largely for lazy uncreative people and also those who though get good at being "prompt engineers"

but when it comes to historical themes, it is eye wateringly painful trash to look upon

The authors should sue… I know we should not 'judge a book by its cover' but really…

AI generated art is often very bad, isn't it? I don't understand how whoever generated this – presumably thinking "I don't have to pay for this" – accepted it. I guess it was the AIs first attempt. I haven't used AI 'Art' software, but like the writing packages, can you suggest improvements for the next iteration? Or is so grossly ignorant that pointing out the clothing malfunction would not be possible?

Everyone picks on the computer. Some human being had to say "yes, that's what I wanted." Probably someone told the computer what sort of images it was to work from. And I can show you far worse covers done with no computer involvement whatever.

Always remember "Cover illustrators can't read. Blurb writers CAN read, but have not read the book."

Personally, I have great hopes for AI. I think in five or ten years it will be possible for me to buy fiction of types the magazine editors and publishers no longer accept. You guys can run around telling each other that real books are handwritten and this moveable type thing is just a fad, but I think those computers will some day take me back to Leigh Brackett's Mars. ANALOG and Baen Books never will.

Different than the image above – but related to the topic

Napoleon.org had an interesting piece on AI art and Napoleon

"Portrait of Napoleon I created with the help of artificial intelligence © Bas Uterwijk"

"An astonishingly "life-like" image of Napoleon appeared on social networks this week. It was created with the help of artificial intelligence by dutch photographer Bas Uterwijk. Napoleon.org wanted to find out more about how the artist created this image and we are delighted to share with you the answers he kindly provided."

The article shares the Artist use and learning with AI to produce results.

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It's not the book of the Ridley Scott film is it? In which case, the ghastly cover is entirely appropriate.

It is a mess

"The article shares the Artist use and learning with AI to produce results."

Was that written with the help of AI?

Interesting article, the artist has a deep background in art, 3D art and AI learning and basically created his own custom facial rendering tool that taps a range of images of Napoleon from historical sources to create a custom model he can further manipulate.

Basic AI tools like Midjourney don't do that. They are designed NOT to provide authentic accuracy because they do not want to be liable for copyright infringement or law suits. So you can take an historical WW2 image and give it commands weighting historical accuracy of weapons and so on, and it will never render, say, an accurate M1 Garand or an accurate Sherman tank. It will render a close approximation so they don't get sued by the Getty Photo Library or something.

So average AI tools only ever give you "good enough." It takes deeper skills and custom or paid platforms to do what the man in the follow-on article did.

Seriously, people. There have been terrible book covers since the invention of the dust jacket. I have yet to see a thread or article titled "Terrible Human-Designed Book Cover." I can find you as much poorly thought-out, badly organized and researched, erroneous and ungrammatical writing done by human beings as you would ever want to read. More even. Some of it took prestigious awards. But I've never seen a comment to the effect that "this means humans can't write."

We've got a bunch of new tools. Presumably they'll improve over time. Certainly some people will use them better than others. But when you see bad carpentry, you don't denounce saws and hammers. A human being paid another human being for that dust jacket. Those are the people you want to be mad at, not the software. Neither of them had to accept this.

I'm fascinated by what the soldiers are wearing. They look like outfits rejected from 1970s Doctor Who episodes for being too cheap-looking.

@ arthur1815: very much so.

We should be mindful that authors don't often get to choose the cover any more than newspaper article writers choose the headline.

Here is the 2019 cover of this book – I assume it's the UK edition:

The French (the original) from 2010 is the same, but in French of course: link

This doesn't surprise me, AI is obviously new tech that is most likely here to stay and will get better and more powerful over time, like most other tech in history. I think it is justified to have a thumbs down for the humans that had the final say and were supposed to catch this kinda mistake…..which is probably just repeating what others have said:) Happy gaming.