Proliferation of AI Book Covers

Notes before beginning: 

1. I have a fantasy flash fiction piece up to read at Schlock!

2. Some people have been duped by others into thinking they purchased a genuine image for their ads or whatnot; it's why I differentiate between those knowing something is AI generated or not.

Back in November, I reviewed three Christmas books on this blog. I tried to find reads in a range of genres to share. There were even two holiday horror selections I had picked out—a short story collection and a novel. I ended up not reviewing either... because of AI.

As far as I know, neither book was written with the help of AI, but they weren't free of it. The novel had a cover with an '80s aesthetic I thought was a photo and added clip art, but the interior mentioned that AI "made" it. The short story collection had a drawn cover, which was produced by a human, but at the end of every story was an image definitely not created by a person.

I'm against generative AI for more reasons than I care to get into here, but it goes against my morals to openly discuss/promote work I know uses AI to churn it out. I still haven't read either book all the way through and don't expect to.

A lot of writers, even those against using AI to craft a novel, will still consider using AI to design their cover art or online ads. How is it okay to steal art for a book cover just to turn around and slap an "anti-piracy" page in your book? Even better, novels written with the "help" of AI sometimes have a notice inside warning people that the story cannot be taken to train LLMs! I guess they're fine with taking other people's art but refuse to feed those marvelous machines... hypocrites.

Amazon has a way to mark if a story was created by a slop machine, but it's not mandatory. Most people who use AI to finish a novel will often refuse to indicate how they "wrote" their "creations" because they know readers predominantly prefer stories by actual authors. I believe anyone knowingly using generative AI on things sold to the public without disclosure should be in trouble for false advertising.

Honestly, I can't always tell when something is crapped out by AI versus being human-made, and it will only get more difficult to tell down the road. Do you have trouble with figuring out what images, books, and videos are produced by AI?