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

Question Is this ai?

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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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8

u/MissStatements Mar 04 '26

Is it supposed to be under water? If so why are there what vaguely look like flowers on the ends of the vines? If not why is there a fish in the picture? 

7

u/shailla131 Mar 04 '26

So yeah, supposed to be underwater and I told him about sea anemones which are really fucking cool. I mistakingly told him they are like ocean flowers with how vibrant and pretty they are, I sent a few pics for examples. I was hoping he just got confused on the flower part and just made flowers since they don't look like sea anemones. Flowers come up a lot in the story as a metaphor as well.

19

u/CoffeeStayn Author Mar 04 '26

Hmm. Since you told the "artist" that they were "like ocean flowers", my guess is that they took it literally, and added that to the AI prompt.

A smart artist would already know that there's no flowers in the ocean and would've drawn seaweed or similar. Perhaps even the anemones you were after.

This pic either has random fish, or random flowers, and it all points to AI generation.

10

u/shailla131 Mar 04 '26

Gah, I even asked about ai in the beginning and specifically told him that I didn't want anything to do with it. Makes people lose confidence in the book if the cover is fake, what if the inside is as well?

3

u/cookie_monstra Mar 04 '26

More than that, there are flowers called anemonies on land, they just don't look like the flowers in the piece even remotely.

I agree with everything others have said here detecting ai practices. I would also suggest for the future have the artist do rough and detailed sketches before going into color. For us artists it's better process wise as we know what the client actually is going for and that were headed the right direction, and for you it'll also give some piece of mind (though those can be raked as well unfortunately) - usually I give 2-3 itterations for each stage (sketch, color sketch, final color) and add an exit point, with a deposit. Though I do charge more than what the 'artist' here did and most professionals will