DREAMS OF A LOST MOONCHILD

Sometimes I am baffled at the absolute ignorance that some anti ai people have, the complete willingness to gatekeep what I consider my craft.

So this all started with a youtube video about shitty AI books, and I made a comment wishing the dude in the video had phrased himself differently.

And then this absolute gem of a person shows up.. and tells me that all I just said was bullshit, and use BookBrush like a big girl (well to be fair he didn’t tell ‘me’ per se, because this wasn’t about me as an author at all), but it’s almost free, and also free of shitty AI… because AI is always shitty, didn’t you know?

So I had to look… and omg a rabbithole, I admit I laughed hard.

first of all the free option is stupid limited, but that is as could be expected, but I hadn’t really seen the best yet. Just keep these prices in mind, and know they are paid yearly. so its $99 we’re talking about in a singular payment.

So I tried it out, made myself two different covers, and a tiktok advertisement to boot. Yeah… and besides the editing options being more than limited on a free plan, when you download it, you have a goddamn watermark.

Yep, to remove the watermark, you have to pay for a plan. I guess the cover creator is what gives you access to the covers without watermark, and to be fair that is available to the lowest tier paid membership (you could learn from that WordPress!) – but still… what the fuck, this means that the free option is only good for what? adds? they don’t have watermarks.

And also it is pretty easy to remove said watermark, but if you know how to do that, why would you make a cover in this shit program.

And as I messed around a little more – I saw it. The image deal they have on BookBrush, is with Pixarbay, and you know what is on Pixarbay? fucking AI all over the place. Now this is obviously AI, and when you click the creator link and is taken to pixarbay, it’s not exactly something the creator hide either.

but if you thought it was just the obvious stuff, you’d be wrong. This line art – well that is all AI too.

And the patterns… same shit.

Now I didn’t take screenshots of everything, because then this would be a chore to write and read. But I guess I made my point. And this person microcosme, I know they have stuff on Canva too. And I even know what program they used to make those patterns, because I used it too, same goes for the line art, I used that program to make my graphics for my authors blog.

I mean look at this shit, it’s pretty obvious – and it’s terrible. There no fucking quality check or anything – it’s just anything and everything uploaded to pixarbay. And while i laughed at the ‘use bookbrush that is without ai’, because I have yet to see anything that is not ai, or a stock photo (and ai can imitate stock photos too) – this is just embarrassing, and plays right into the anti ai idea about people just writing something in a prompt and slam it up there to make money. because that is exactly what this is.

I searched, I swear I did – And I did not find a singular creator who contributed to the bookbrush archive of artwork, that did not do AI art. Or it’s that ‘free clip art’ account that just steals anything on the net.

So I had to make myself a cover, and yes it’s on purpose the title is gibberish. This is right about the laziest first gen ai image, there has been no edits, tweaks or nothing. and yet this person earns royalties from this. So of course I had to make myself a book that isn’t ai, like that person said in the YT comments.

Look at my wonderful creations… they are clearly not ai. And if you think I had to search for these images, I didn’t – I typed in ‘occult’ and searched on ‘stock images’, these were within the first ten options.

And honestly it’s nothing I can’t make in Canva… better. hahaha okay admitted this isn’t me trying, but you get my point. This blue image with Cacophonies, is made in Canva, using nothing but their own assets, and of course my own book cover, which isn’t made in Canva.

I’m not even sure what I am thinking about this, but I can say that bookbrush is basically a worse version of Canva – even free Canva.

And I must admit that I can’t decide if I an troubled by the fact that this person states that when you create a book cover with Bookbrush it’s without ai, or if I think it’s hilariously naive. People simply need to get over themselves.

And I really don’t understand why the cover on the left, which i made in bookbrush, with an obvious (also subpar, unedited) ai image, is okay. But the cover on the right, which is made by me, and edited in Canva – which is both a mash of two images and also color corrected, is of the devil.

So if I use the witch cover I am a real big girl author, who isn’t out for money, and respects the craft, or whatever the shit it was they said.

The morale of today must be, if use ai from a platform and didn’t make it yourself, it’s okay.

yeah, wow.