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Authors dumped from New Zealand’s top book prize after AI used in cover designs
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2025
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I fucking hate AI art slop. I hate it.
But
This seems like a case where the authors are being punished for the bad behavior of their publishers. Authors have very little control over this sort of thing, and yeah, you can say "they should have chosen a better publisher" or whatever... but book publishing is an extremely crowded market, and authors aren't exactly spoiled for choice when it comes to finding someone to publish their work.
I think the publishers should absolutely be shamed and dragged through the mud for this, but let the authors compete. As long as there's no evidence they used AI to write anything, let their work stand on its own merit rather than judging a book by a cover they had no control over.
Authors often don't even control the TITLE much less the cover.
It seems odd to punish an author and a book because of the cover in a competition that has nothing to do with the cover.
I worked for a shady publisher back in 2010. I did children's book layouts, and the author had to provide all off their own illustrations and I had to make the images fit with the text.
I knew the people in the department doing the covers for adult books. I could totally see them using AI, and the authors would have no say in the matter. My wife had a book published through them before I worked there, i even did a cover for her but they said they do not accept covers and did their own that had nothing to do with the book itself. I think it was a fountain pen and a rose.
I hate that this comment is so reasonable and it's at the bottom of the pile. Upvoted.