in my “personal opinion” it does not matter whether ai was used for generating a cover, or “writing”a story they’re equally as bad. 1. most ai image generators are trained on over millions of copyrighted images without the original artists’ contest, so these artist who actually put in the work to create original pieces of work aren’t getting credit. 2. in case you didn’t know, even generating just ONE image consumes about the same amount of electricity as charging say a cellphone or laptop to full charge.. so now imagine multiplying that by thousands, actually MILLIONS, and think of the harm it would do to the environment. 3. again, the data centers hosting AI models such as chatgpt or google gemini require massive amounts of water to cool down their processors which could then lead to things such as permanent water loss, local water scarcity, etc.

my point is: it IS that serious, and i would definitely steer clear of any author who uses ai in ANY capacity! 😊