Why I didn't choose AI.

AI is quickly becoming one of the most debated topics in creative work. For those of us who remember the early days of the internet, it feels familiar but this time, everything is happening much faster.

I’m not completely against AI. I understand it’s a tool, and I don’t think it’s realistic (or fair) to expect people not to use it. But for me personally, I’ve spent a long time developing my writing, and I didn’t want to undermine that by using an artificially generated cover for my work.

One of the biggest shifts AI has brought is how much it lowers the barrier to entry. That’s not inherently a bad thing, but it does come with trade-offs. The covers I see online often share a similar vibe: slightly misaligned text, a faint yellow hue, a silhouetted figure placed front and centre. They’re not identical, but they’re close enough that patterns form.

And unlike designing something yourself, you don’t have the same level of control. You can’t just tweak a detail or move a title. You’re often forced to regenerate the entire image and hope for something better.

What really prompted me to write this, though, was seeing two completely different books by two different authors with almost identical cover imagery. I won't link them, but it got me thinking, would those authors care?

I suppose the reality is, AI doesn’t create in the same way humans do.... It recombines. It can never truly create. And as more AI-generated content feeds into itself, the results risk becoming increasingly uniform.

There’s clearly a place for AI somewhere, and I'm not here to draw that line. But for me, part of the value in creating something is that it’s mine, with all the imperfections, decisions, and effort that come with it.