Cherie mentioned about using AI to make a song and sing for her, as she didn't have the means to do it. My friend in Supernovauk is in that position - they don't have the equipment or voice to create the music that they have in their minds, so they use AI. However, a big however, they write all the words and they work hard on getting the music to exactly where they want it. It's supporting human creativity, rather than supplanting it. However, I wish my friend had the access that they needed to do it without, because I can hear what they want to produce, and I very much enjoy the reminder of dancing till I dropped back in the day, but there is always that tiny lack of spark.
Too many years ago, when I was in the Girl Guides (British version of the Girl Scouts) I blagged my way through the music badge as I was getting guitar lessons and I ambushed the teacher. I was supposed to produce an original composition, and I did, but it was bloody awful. My teacher passed me anyway, but I was frustrated. I knew how I wanted it to sound, but I didn't have the talent, the technical know-how, or the equipment to get there. At 13, I would absolutely have used AI if it were now. It was a little like Einaudi, I guess, with flowing notes. Here is a link to a real musician.
I'm pretty sure that I'm using AI without realising, like when I plan a route using Google maps, but I've avoided it on the whole. I don't know what I'm doing, and that's the long and short of it, and you can find more of my views here and here on my blog. AI can't do the thinking for you, not fully. Here's an example from Weary Wolf, who got AI to design a week of eating three meals per day for £1 per meal, the video here if you're interested.
It was sort of functional, but I wouldn't have called it healthy, and it was missing something that had nothing to do with nutrition. Again, you could say that it lacked spark.
The book world is having fits about AI. Authors who are suspected of using AI are likely to find themselves under vicious attack. There are witchhunts going on that are deeply unpleasant. But I get it. If someone has spent months on a book, then paid out for an editor, which can run to hundreds if not thousands, then paid out for a cover, and some of those are extremely pricey, maybe sell a few copies, and then see someone making a lot of money by publishing a couple of novels a week of stuff that isn't that well written, then it hurts. Most of these turn up in non-fiction, where they can be extremely misleading to those who need help or trustworthy information, or romance novels. I read a lot of romance novels, and I have read the first page of so many books that are utterly dire and obviously AI and I've not read further. It drives me nuts because it's time in browsing and choosing from the Kindle Unlimited titles that I won't get back, even if I've only dipped into that one page. However the pennies from those single pages mount up if there are literally hundreds of titles attracting the unwary and there are those out there who profit from this. If the authors were at least honest about AI use, at least you can make a choice.
It's like a deal with a devil, though. It's incredibly tempting. I have maybe twenty or so outlines for novels. I'm not young, I'm not in good health, and I'm not confident that I'll be able to write them all. The thought of getting AI involved is soooo tempting. It would be my ideas, and I'd almost certainly re-write any text as the stuff that AI churns out is gruesome, but... It would feel like cheating. And I couldn't hope for my work to have that spark.
Even more tempting is the idea of AI art. It's taking the livelihood of genuine artists who have that spark, but I can't affort to pay someone to draw the beautiful stuff that I imagine. I definitely couldn't draw or paint something myself as I have a negative amount of artistic talent and I'm not sure that I could be trusted with a paint by numbers. It's like a devil's bargain, whispering in my ear. I can imagine what I want, I can see it so clearly, but I could never produce it, not without either paying a lot of money to an artist or using that tempting AI. I feel like I'm being tempted like in those Medieval legends. I keep telling myself to avoid the pictures and stick to words. At least I feel that I can be competent with those.
For the heck of it, I went onto Canva. Until now, I hadn't used their AI function, and I've been warned against using their book covers as there are elements that are AI generated and lead to online lynching, but I wanted to try something.
I clicked on the AI assistant, and I wrote book cover with a raven flying holding a ring on a ribbon. That is all I wrote. I didn't put in any suggestions about colour or style, just the basic idea. I got this.
I only put in that brief description. However not only did it generate the picture, but it also generated the title, the subtitle some secrets are worth any price, the tag A throne A curse A choice that will change everything and the name, Eliana Vaelor. I checked. At the time of typing, there isn't a book with this title on Amazon, and there is no record online of anyone with the name Eliana Vaelor, author or otherwise. AI went in fully committed.
I find it scary. I also feel drawn to writing the book. For now, though, I think that I'll concentrate on what I can manage without AI, just to be safe.
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