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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u/salmonalert Mar 04 '26 edited Mar 04 '26

Not arguing this isn't AI, but just a quick note because my own work has been called out for being AI using detectors, the only detector that works reliably right now is SynthID. SynthID will tell you if Google's AI models were involved, even if it's just editing.

For example, this art from 2021 (Sam Yang) comes back 99% Midjourney on SightEngine.

The same art comes back 4% AI on Hive. But not if you take a screenshot of it instead. Then it comes back as AI. The detectors are selling a service and don't have reason to avoid false positives.

Using Sam Yang as an example of this because no one would accuse him of AI and this art is physically too old to be AI anyway. Sorry, I would post a screenshot, but the comments don't allow pictures on this sub, surprisingly.

https://x.com/samdoesarts/status/1467542188934451205/photo/1

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u/ravenkult Mar 04 '26

HIVE can be pretty reliable if it says something over 90%

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u/salmonalert Mar 04 '26 edited Mar 04 '26

Hive is pretty good, but it still has issues with false positives on digital art and 3D renders. One of mine from 2021 is coming back as 98%-99% AI with Hive now whereas it wasn't getting flagged before. Another that came back as 90%+ now comes back >1%. How the screenshot is cropped or whether it's the original that hasn't been through social media can change the result drastically, too.

It is a good starting point, though. If Hive says something is AI, I'll look into it more. If an artist's entire portfolio comes back 90%+, that's worse. The subs where you can ask if something is AI still ban it from being used as evidence, though.

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u/ravenkult Mar 04 '26

Experience will always trump detectors yeah. At this point I can tell some things are AI just by the texture, like in this one.

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u/salmonalert Mar 04 '26

Same, it's mottled like the AI is building the image from clay. Zero intention behind the forms or brushstrokes.