Artificial Intelligence. Now what do I know about that? Not a great deal, I admit. When I was younger I loved new technology and couldn't wait to find out how it worked. These days, I confess, technological progress is more likely to induce a sigh: yet another new thing to learn. Despite this, my eye was caught by a post from a writer friend. She had been trying out art produced via AI with a view to using it as a book cover.
Automatic artwork! As a writer, I was intrigued; as an artist I was mildly horrified. So I read on. My friend had been using Midjourney, part of an ongoing AI research project, and I have to say the result was quite impressive. Access to it is free, at least to be begin with, too. It works by the user giving it an instruction in the form of a short sentence describing the required artwork, and anyone can have 25 goes for nothing. After that, you would need to pay for access. Obviously there is a degree of skill in wording your instruction sentence in order to get the result you want, and, interestingly, you specify anything you don't want, too.
Some of the results you can look at on the site are remarkable, Dali-esque, almost unimaginable, and there are numerous controls to modify the appearance of your artwork. It's probably fair to say that unless you know what you're doing, you'd need your 25 free goes to get reasonably good at it, and you need to have some grip on concepts like aspect ratios, too. But oh, the possibilities for the self-publisher (or the small publisher) seeking unique artwork for their book covers!
It certainly makes the current usual method of slogging through online image sites looking for something to suit your work seem decidedly old-fashioned. I doubt if it quite beats commissioning an artist to create something to order – but if your budget doesn't stretch to that, or you're willing to learn to use this sort of technology, the future beckons.
If I don't try it myself (and I'm tempted) it's largely because it means more screentime for my less than perfect eyes, but if anyone has tried AI art, I'd love to know how you got on, and what you think of the results.
The artwork for my new novella Call of the Merry Isle was provided by my lovely publisher Veneficia Publications and the book is available at www.veneficiapublications.com
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