Here is what ruddy sucks about ai

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I have put a 6000 word short story on this website. It would break it up to use some nice illustrations. Particularly the superhero suit that George bought in a charity shop in Manchester, which works. Or him time-travelling.

The story is the top one on Free Fiction.

I can’t afford to pay for art on the website. What’s reasonable for someone to ask, what is fair for their time and talent, is not easily findable on less than minimum wage. Wish I sold a gazillion books, one thing I would do for sure is scatter it across artists.

There are good, ethical, free photo libraries (pexels, unsplash) and a website listing public domain art (artvee). And some oddities like Library of Congress. Often, they have something quite good. 90% of the time I manage.

I could spend ? ten minutes using an AI programme to generate something, not as I see it, but roughly enough. That would use a lot of energy and be using the product of deliberate, pre-meditated, knowing theft. AI is trained on real people’s work, with a vague idea that ‘we’ll use lawyers to sort it out later’. That is, steal the rights and force people to sue.

My experiments took time, and now I have a basic understanding of how these programmes work, Any more and I am not just sniffing the blood, I am dipping my hand in it.

I could hire a good artist to draw it, which would be a day or two at fastest and £100 at best. (Or I could trade if I knew anyone good and in appropriate style, and with free time. I will, swap art for novel reading, just saying.)

I could learn to draw, which is on my list of things I’d like to try. It would be ages before I would be good enough, and another creative – seated – not going for a walk -not finishing the book pastime is not what the doctor ordered.

I could steal someone else’s work directly.

So, I did without. But it shows the case use for AI as quick and cheap (ignoring the environment, the disrespect to skill, the lowering of career possibilities for artists.)