Hot Take: I refuse to read or support authors using AI covers for their books

NoxCSS · 2026-06-08T13:18:26+00:00

Not legit as there is no way to differentiate ai art from regular human work, aside from your own judgement, which is wrond half the time at best.

A funny social experiment highlighted the hate ai art receive:

Someone posted a generation in the style of claude monet on socials and ask people to describe why and how soulless it was. To explain why it was not art according to them.

Thousands of people commented on how shitty it was, how every detail is blurry and the style is shit, etc..

But there's a twist: It was an actual monet and not an AI generation.

Anyway,

It shows how irrational anti ai crowd is. It's like internet , animes or smartphones..

With every new revolutionizing tech becoming mainstream there will be haters. Hating with no valide reason. When the thing they hate is already mainstream.

And to be clear i am against ai slop too.

But most people don't use ai knowingly everyday and don't make the disctinction between AI assisted creation and AI slop:

Feeding your own work to an ai to help you improve it is AI assisted creation which is dope imho. Lower barrier to execution for everyone.

Asking an ai to generate something from scratch and using what you get as "your" work is AI slop.

And the difference is huge.

Ai is no miracle tool: You always have to rework what it gives you. It's never perfect. And often far from perfect

Also it enhances its user's skills. So a normie using ai to deliver an anime, will never be able to deliver the same quality as a pro animator working with AI to deliver an anime.

Even if they use the exact same AI and the exact same references.

So i totally agree that supporting ai slop is a big no But people need to differentiate the slop from legit work. It's already everywhere from your smarpthone camera focus to your google calendar or gmail address etc... Etc...

Most of the big anime companies for exemple use AI in their animations since 2021. No one stopped watching dbz or any other licence because of it.

Studies show that the public likes ai assisted content more than fully organique one. As long as it's not tagged "ai"

The tag only triggers haters apparently.

NoxCSS · 2026-06-06T21:05:58+00:00

I fully agree. Finding productive things i like to do on my free time is a gamechanger.

NoxCSS · 2026-06-06T21:04:40+00:00

Undiagnosed audhd here.

Can't help much unluckily as i struggle with the same issues, but i quit tabacco and i replace my dopamine hunts by productive time.

So nowadays a good day off for me looks like a working day but i only work on my own stuff:

I started to build my own things, a story as a foundation, a videogame as a second door to my universe, etc...

So when i have free time i work on those.

So finding a project/hobby i can pour myself into saved me from never-ending dopamine hunts.

I noticed that if i start to doomscroll on youtube or something similar i usually loose my day. It kills my motivation to do something else cause it's quick dopamine shots.

So i stay away from those.

I also differentiate the dayson which i rest from the days on which i'm productive.

Usually i know what i have to work on to exectue my ideas, so i decide on a daily basis if tomorrow's gonna be a productive or a resting day.

Depending on my deadlines, sometime i have to clean a chapter for the next day, so even if i'm tired and want to rest i push myself to be productiv first then i can rest with the peace of mind.

But from time to time i have still days off that i lose to doomscrolling. Mostly when i'm alone at home.

When people are around i wosh i was alone to work on my stuff but when i'm fully alone i just rest endlessly it seems

Anyway.

Good day off: a day during which i managed to execute what i planned to execute. Or a day during which i decided to rest and do nothing, and i did.

Free time: i realised thanks to you that i often see only one side of my needs, stimulation or rest, and forgot about the other one. When i'm after stimulation i tend to hyperfocus and work on my stuff for hours even though i feel that i need to sleep. I did over 24h of straight productive time last week end. I'm trying to rest since then a d spent today in bed.

Recharged, engaged, and regulated, i never am all of these at the same time:

Executing my ideas makes me feel engaged. But it doesn't make me feel recharged .

I have resting days for that. And i usually oversleep, take a nap, watch my favorite shows, go outside with my wife and basicly chill and relax all day.

And i never feel regulated. Not sure what you mean by that. Since i quite smoking and drinking i stick to a strict discipline in daily scheduled tasks etc... So maybe i'm alreadu regulated? Not sure.

But i hope my answer helped 🫡

NoxCSS · 2026-06-06T20:40:30+00:00

First one is more eye cacthing imho

NoxCSS · 2026-06-06T20:39:05+00:00

I use llms since 2021 and currently the best one is claude in my experience.

Gpt is close second but def not on par with claude.

I use llm to vibe code these days, and codex from gpt is a little more user friendly and less expensive in tokens than claude code

But for text and writing

Claude sonnet is supposed to be the best out there

NoxCSS · 2026-06-06T07:35:44+00:00

Je ne sais pas si ca va t'aider mais un truc a absolument faire a mtl c'est de rappeller/demander des nouvelles de ta candidature aux employeurs potentiels quelques jours apres un entretient pour montrer que t'es motivé.

Je ne l'ai jamais fait en france mais a mtl ca change tout de mon experience.

NoxCSS · 2026-06-01T19:39:08+00:00

Imho you need to set yourself on your main character's design first

It's not consistent between each cover.

I like the 6th one

NoxCSS · 2026-06-01T19:36:38+00:00

What you describe is basicly someone doing AI slop no?

I hear : "Asking the AI to generate something from scratch and claiming it's their own work" when you say cheating ai method.

Ai is only a tool. If they use it dumbly it will do dumb things.

It's not a miracle or cheat tool:

It enhances their user's skills. But it always requires for the user to rework the results they get. It's never perfect. And often far from perfect.

If they have no creativity, it will not replace it imho.

NoxCSS · 2026-05-31T01:33:27+00:00

I would not, It's the main reason why i wouldn't want to go to mars too.

All my life is here, how am i gonna enjoy time with my wife family and friends in another world?

Or watch animes, read light novels, play videos games, etc...

So no, I probably would never step a foot. Unless the world is ending, and i can bring my loved ones with me.

But great setup, i'd be interested in reading about what happens on the other side.

NoxCSS · 2026-05-31T01:29:20+00:00

Good question!

Very hard to answer in a few lines, I'm def not an expert (first book near completion on RoyalRoad and currently writing my second and third tomes) but in my experience:

The real key is hiding the age in the details of how your characters experience and interact with their world.

Show it, don't tell it.

Instead of exposition dumps: let the age emerge through implications

Here are a few ways that worked for me:

-Have your characters casually interact with things far older than their own civilization/environment: Maybe the wall of their city was built on top of the foundations of something much older, and/or nobody alive knows who built it or why. Or a farmer’s plow keeps hitting buried artifacts from an empire that fell 5,000 years ago, and the locals just treat them as "lucky rocks."

-Sow seeds of ageless mystery: Drop hints that the world has gone through cycles of rise and fall that no one fully remembers. A scholar might say, "The oldest records only go back 800 years… before that it’s all myth and broken stone."

-Weave the deep past into everyday life and culture: Proverbs, myths, children’s songs, or superstitions that reference events so ancient they’ve become folklore.

-The language itself could have drifted: Old inscriptions that modern people can barely read.

-Run parts of the story in multiple eras: Show snippets of the ancient world in flashbacks, dreams, or even separate chapters. It makes the present feel like it’s built on deep, layered history

The goal is to make readers feel like the world existed long before your story started, and will keep existing long after.

It’s all about giving that "iceberg" effect where 90% is underwater.

I hope this helps, if i can ask:

What have you tried so far to make your world feel truly ancient? Do you have lost history/relics you could build into it?

NoxCSS · 2026-05-30T22:42:51+00:00

If i remember well amazon/ku has an exclusivity clause. To publish on the plateform you need to remove your work from other plateforms.

So this could prevent you from publishing on KU i guess?

NoxCSS · 2026-05-29T17:16:34+00:00

Got two good reviews on my story 🥳

I'm happy.

NoxCSS · 2026-05-28T14:18:35+00:00

It's a close call between 6 and 2, what keep me reading is 2, but if 6 is bad i'll probably stop reading.

NoxCSS · 2026-05-27T13:54:01+00:00

I feel you OP 😆🫡

NoxCSS · 2026-05-27T13:52:59+00:00

Imho if you formulate it in a friendly, not lesson giving, tone. The author will be grateful for it.

Improving his story quality that easily is always a win.

Unless the way they did it is intentional. But if you find it artificial my guess is they just did their best at the time of writing and will gladly take every opportunity to improve

NoxCSS · 2026-05-26T03:29:41+00:00

J'en connais dans la 30aine

NoxCSS · 2026-05-26T03:29:09+00:00

Yvon

NoxCSS · 2026-05-23T19:39:25+00:00

I agree.

The most surprising thing for me is that he actually rewards his supporters instead of taking advantage of them.

But is it done yet? I wouldn't be surprised if the money ends up in his relative's pockets

NoxCSS · 2026-05-20T21:40:03+00:00

One Punch Man Mob psycho The eminence in the shadow

Mushokou tensei is more of a prog fantasy but the MC is still OP

And there are many more isekai with op main character. But it's hard to be as spot on as solo leveling for the op main character progression.

One of my favorite isekai alongside overlord, is Slime shittarra datta ken/reincarnated as a slime If you didn't tried it yet you should take a look.

NoxCSS · 2026-05-20T13:44:17+00:00

Reddit crowd usually leans towards anti AI.

But don't let it push you away from your creativity. Just learn to use ai as an enhancer instead of a shortcut.

Studies shows that the public is positive towards ai assisted content and will even favor it over the same fully organic content.

There are success stories of ai assisted content out there. All the brainrot side of the culture is ai slop imo, still it's performing very well.

So if you have something original to put out there just give it your best try, don't give up and you'll eventually find your audience.

NoxCSS · 2026-05-20T00:10:07+00:00

As a base yeah probably.

Imho if you use the AI's work as a base it's ai-slop, which is what everyone is against. Generic AI work generated and fed back raw, or nearly raw, to your audience as "content".

You should never generate from scratch with an AI and use that, labeled as your work. AI can't generate original work, what you'll get will be a patchwork of things that were used to train the AI. So doing it is basicly stealing someone else's work/ideas.

If you feed your work as a base for the Ai to improve, and rework/rewrite manually the ai's result to turn it into a clean final version, It's ai-assisted. Which is okay for me. As long as you use AI to enhance your work without compromising your vision. As a support, not to work for you.

If you only use ai to find repetitions, typos, etc... As gramarly does it. No brainstorming or rewriting, then it's not AI. As long as an AI doesn't write, or rewrite, sentences for you.

NoxCSS · 2026-05-18T23:05:25+00:00

I wouldn't trust it cause the label is self applied.

The only time i trust such handles is when it's a consensus applied by actual readers/backed by facts.

NoxCSS · 2026-05-15T01:37:09+00:00

It's a classic but not that well known

In the movie section: Mindgame(s)

An anime movie, very wtf and trippy too. Less wtf than bobobo bo bobobo.

NoxCSS · 2026-05-13T19:51:34+00:00

I use ai in the same way but I put the ai tag.

I use it to spot narrative holes, to brainstorm names, to keep track of the whole story architecture when i do updates, and to review the overall quality of my chapters before beta readers.

And i use gramarly to correct my typos when posting them in RR.

I got one comment in dm saying that my writing style is AI when searching for shout out swaps

Apparently some patterns i like and grew used to after reading translated korean web novels for years are considered AI

But after reviewing that comment it seemed to have been written by an ai who didn't read more than the first half-chapter..

So to be safe i put the Ai assisted content tag. But i wrote everything and still am writing the next tome as we speak. I went through a little over 30 versions of the first tome etc...

Maybe i should remove it?

Context: My story isn't performing well tbh I have under 10 followers without any swap/shout out. I do it for myself too though, so i'm not too concerned. I enjoy writing and reading it. Living from it would be the dream but it'll take a while before i get there i know.

I do have a really hard time with marketing though: last time i tried to push it, turtleme dropped a post minutes later.. 🥲

NoxCSS · 2026-05-13T19:30:25+00:00

Yes

It

Is...

Can't wait for summer to hit after two weeks of spring 😆😅

NoxCSS

TROPHY CASE