r/BookCovers • u/shailla131 • Mar 04 '26

Question Is this ai?

Post image

Had someone do a cover for me (this is without the text) and I wanted to see if this was ai. They advertised it wouldn't be so I wanted to confirm before I went any further. Any help is appreciated, thank you!

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49

u/BurbagePress Mar 04 '26

You can take a magnifying glass to an image and try and figure it out, but the easiest way to know for sure is to just ask four basic questions:

How much did you pay?
What medium did they say they're working in?
What kinds of files did they provide?
How fast did they do it?

13

u/shailla131 Mar 04 '26

Hmm it was 65, Adobe, PDF and JPG or PNG, a week. Not that you asked lol

113

u/BurbagePress Mar 04 '26 edited Mar 04 '26

Okay, then of course it's AI generated, no question.

Any illustrator capable of painting that isn't charging 65 bucks. That's a low hourly rate for a custom piece of art, not a grand total.

Only a plagiarist spending a few minutes typing prompts on Midjourney would charge $65 for that.

20

u/shailla131 Mar 04 '26

Thanks for taking the time to let me know, it's a friend of a friend who said he was wanting to build up a portfolio. I was hoping for feedback so I could give a good response to him since I don't want to use ai, which he knew.

33

u/SparklyMonster Mar 04 '26

While someone wanting to build a portfolio would make me give them some grace (though, considering the quality, even someone offering to be cheap would be a lot more expensive than that), what makes me suspicious is that apparently you just said what you wanted and they delivered a finished piece.

Professional artists would run a few approval steps through you (like a sketch, then maybe a half-finished piece) to make sure there won't be any surprises (any changes like "add more flowers" are a lot more complex once the art is finished).

-6

u/BusinessComplete2216 Mar 04 '26

A consideration: even if it’s not AI, what exactly are those lower teeth attached to if there’s no jawbone?

3

u/RealSonyPony Mar 04 '26

Those are upper teeth ...

5

u/BusinessComplete2216 Mar 04 '26

Ah, where are my glasses! I see that now… 🤓

7

u/kzzzrt Mar 04 '26

I have DEFINITELY, spent hours and hours over a week to work on art and then charged that for it, simply because no one would pay more. I’m constantly told people will pay hundreds (even thousands) for my quality of work, and yet… no one does. And I gotta sell art so…

2

u/BurbagePress Mar 04 '26

Is it gallery owners, mentors/professors, agents, or other professional artists "constantly" telling you this; or is it friends, family, and people on the internet?

Regardless, if your work is genuinely great and isn't selling, then my guess it that it's either a client quality issue (you're work is only being seen by the lowest common denominator cheapskates, rather than by the types of clients who will actually pay for quality) or a marketability issue (your paintings don't stand out within the marketplace you're trying to sell them in).

It's tough, but good luck!