1/13/25
Good morning from Japan,
After the other day's post about the future and inpiration, I got inspired to work a bit with AI art generation. Those of you who've been following me for some time know that I used to have a lot of this on my site. In fact, it was one of the main areas I focused on. (I could worry less about scene descriptions by just offering an image.)
But in recent times I've steered away from that. When it comes to my published works, I want to use real art made by real people. When my cover art for Foundations was first delivered, I was really sad to see AI art, but I ended up using it anyway.
Yesterday, I saw a set of videos on NVIDIA's new 5000 series graphics cards. They look amazing, and tempting to pick up; I don't really need one. But one major thing stood out: NVIDIA's new generative AI image editing. They showcased a demo of some upcoming tech where they placed 3D objects around a scene and then placed the "camera" in a set position. Then they asked AI to draw an image with those objects in mind.
If you're interested, here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQXabrbvlAo
Now, AI image generation has been in a pretty poor spot for a long while. Obviously there's been changes and growth, but outputs are clearly AI. Maybe it's easier to spot when you've worked with it like I have, but I think the warped details could be spotted by anyone after a few minutes of looking.
Now, that explaination may have drawn some people away from the idea of AI, and other's may be more interested because of it.
Everything comes down to this. As much as I'd like to be, I'm not an illustrator. My art is in writing. I get offended by the use of AI writing and I hate to see AI books publishing on the market. But then I turn around and say I'm fine with AI art. Illustrators hate AI image generators, for a good reason. The same reason I hate AI writing, they hate AI images. It's a threat to their work, their art, their hobbies, etc.
So, why should I use it then? Once again, I'm not an illustrator. While I'd love to pay artist, on a service like Fiverr, to draw concept art, that's a lot of money! Money I don't have. While I still plan to use real artists for the art that matters, AI can fill in some gaps, like concept art or basic artwork on this site.
So, here's my idea. Stick with my plan, use real artists for cover art. But for the nitty gritty details like concept art, I can use AI like I used to and publish some of it here. When I published Foundations, it still had a lot of missing details that were originally covered by AI images. Origins changed that a bit, as I rewrote most of it with a published product in mind. Nothing's going to change here, my descriptions need to imporve anyway.
But, after the fact, I can publish some AI concept art here on the site. (Just sticking with scenes for now, I prefer to use comic/anime style concept art for my characters, but that can turn some people off.)
This should help my process run smoother. I can get a better picture of the scenes I'm describing and hopefully shine better light on the details. I can also share the art with my readers, showing the scenes they're reading. (But I need to find a balance so I don't use it as a crutch.) There are a lot of benefits to using it.
So here's the deal I'll offer. I'll use AI art for concepts, real artists for cover art (or anything official). Later on down the line, if my series take off, I can hire out real artists to rework some concept art for official use.
At the end of the day, everything comes down to this: for better or worse, the world is moving in the direction of AI reliance. It's coming for all our jobs. (We used to fantasize about robots doing our work, and us sitting back. But now that's it's happening, we're scared, some safety nets need to be put in place, but I don't know what those are right now.)
If I ignore AI and keep my head down, I'll get left behind. I'm in a great time for starting these books, as AI is just getting started so I can capaitalize on it, but we're not too far along to bury me in with countless other artists using AI.
I could go on an on, but I'll end here. If you don't like AI, or are scared because of it, let me know. If you dislike my plan, believing I should use real artists for everything, find me someone willing to do the work for cheap. (It'll be hard to beat free AI though...)
With that, I'll sign off and give the first piece of concept art. It's something that's been sitting on the site's homepage for a while, and some art I used in one of the OG issues for Origins.
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