Delusional or Hypocritical?

So there’s this whole AI thing going on….stop if you’ve heard this before!

I want to state unequivocally that I love my AI covers. I worked hard on those and anyone out there who thinks differently has never tried to do this. Therefore, their opinion is rather moot. They should probably just have another handful of birdseed.

I’ve gotten out of every single author/book group where AI bashing and bullying is encouraged and they just keep going round and round like a broken record. Not my gig. I’m not interested in being dragged down in any manner much less actually volunteering for the ‘privilege’. I have joined other author/book groups where such behavior is not allowed. You got an AI cover? Great. You got a human made cover? Good on ya.

Those groups are welcoming and more my ‘speed’. Let’s face it, I would never tell someone who they can marry, what they can do with their own body, or anything else so long as they’re consenting adults engaged in a legal activity. Don’t get me wrong, I will gleefully tell someone they’re an asshole but that’s a different story.

The crap still shows up in my feed along with this “100% Human Made” claim.

Ok.

For a while I thought I should be more open minded. Perhaps, I should do something ‘nice’ and offer these zealots something they will never willing offer anyone else; a choice. I started working on it. I went way the hell back in my archives to find the original covers for my stories–I even found the original cover for “The Heart of War” which is something I thought was long gone. I did this thinking that I would just give those covers a tiny touch up and make them available in a line of Retro paperbacks that could be labeled “100% Human Made”.

As I was falling back in love with my original covers…they are ‘nice’, they are ‘the best I could do’ and I did spent countless hours working on them but that doesn’t make them scroll stoppers. Hence the “Retro Paperback Edition”. That voice in the back of my head piped up.

What are you doing?

(Scoffs) Nothing.

Oh, I see. What are you doing?

Look, you can see I’m trying to….

What did Ricky Nelson say?

Ricky? What the hell? What are you talking about?

Then the song clicked in my head.

Oh, yeah. You can’t please everyone so you got to please yourself.

That’s right. So…what are you doing?

Look, I just want to be able to offer a “100% Human Made” boo-

(Roars with laughter so hard my brain shook!) A…a…WHAT? What year are you living in, my dear?

At the point I put the project down and walked away from it because he’s right. And, yeah, I’m usually the one reminding other people of what decade…century!..it is.

Here, in 2026, there is no such thing as a “100% Human Made” book….or much of anything your grandmother isn’t knitting. It’s a lie at best and an outright self-induced delusion at worst. The honest way to label that is “100% Human Created Content”. That’s as far as you can go with it because once you upload it for ebook, audio, or print, there is AI all over it from the second you hit ‘submit’ to the moment it gets loaded on a truck or downloaded.

But that’s not Generative AI.

It’s still AI, dipstick. It’s still housed in a huge data center, it’s still using your electricity and your water and putting people out of jobs. You know, those things that you whine about after you’re done whining about yourself. Just because it’s not doing anything someone else considers ‘creative’ doesn’t mean…or it shouldn’t mean…it’s ok with you. If it does then that makes you a hypocrite. That’s the worst thing anyone can possibly be because all the really bad stuff people do starts right there. With being a happy hypocrite.

It’s THEFT!

Honey, you and I need to have a really long talk about who stole what from whom first and how all that led straight to AI companies being able to do what they did. A. Really. Long. Talk. I’ll give you a hint; there was no AI involved…it was all just humans…those happy hypocrites….who started that slide.

Anyway, as all of this was rolling around in my head as I was trying to work on the covers, I realized something. I don’t want to help make people comfy-comfy in yet another delusion. We’re already living in a day when people want to ‘cancel’ Freddy Kruger (a fictional character who makes them uncomfy) and in a place where you can’t even spell out the word ‘rape’ in most places anymore…again…uncomfy. Yeah, ok, fine, they’re bratty little children with no backbone. Just look what they did to “Carrie” for crying out loud!

Breathe, my dear, breathe.

Fine.

I could go back to the covers I’ve given a little human elbow grease and stick a blaring badge on them that says: No Generative AI

That’s honest.

100% Human Made.

That’s dishonest.

No one is hand setting type and inking up the rolls anymore. They’re not pressing paper. They’re not sewing bindings by hand. THAT is a 100% Human Made book. We haven’t done it like that in, well, let’s just say ‘a few decades’ and be happy with that. No need to be calling out people’s ages here.

Hal told me that it’s possible people mistake 100% Human Made to mean No Generative AI. But that’s not what it says. As Bar Colby used to remind everyone; Say What You Mean and Mean What You Say. Let me guess, you don’t know Bar Colby. That’s ok, he was only someone who read for comprehension and tried to teach everyone else in my area to do the same.

Maybe I’ll just stick a blaring badge on the AI covers that says; !00% Human WRITTEN.

THAT is HONEST. That says what it means and means what it says.

Or…maybe…..

We’ll just take Ricky Nelson’s good advice.