AI for authors has become a controversial subject lately. I’ve been experimenting with AI-generated graphics for social media lately. Not AI-written books. Not AI-generated excerpts. The words are mine.
I’m talking about the pictures behind the words.
Like most independent authors, I need a steady stream of graphics for Facebook, Instagram, newsletters, promotions, and now my upcoming Kickstarter campaign. One graphic isn’t enough. You need different images, different excerpts, different formats—and you need to keep producing them.
Hiring a graphic designer to create every social media post simply isn’t financially realistic for most authors.
So I’ve been using AI to help create some of the artwork.
And something interesting happened.
When Facebook Labels Your Work “AI Content”
When I posted several of my excerpt graphics on Facebook, Facebook labeled them as AI content.
Fair enough. The artwork was created with AI assistance. The excerpt wasn’t. The book wasn’t. But the image was, so I understand the label, even if I worry it wasn’t clear.
What interested me more was what happened next.
People noticed these AI artwork posts. More people stopped. More people looked. More people interacted with them.
Then I got a message from a friend who had seen the posts. She is a Kickstarter backer herself, and she gave me a strongly worded warning about using AI artwork in my campaign. Her argument, essentially, was that AI is so controversial that using it would drive away potential backers.
And she may be right about some of them.
There are readers—and authors—who feel very strongly about AI-generated artwork. Some object to the way AI models were trained. Some worry about artists losing work. Some simply dislike AI on principle. Those concerns aren’t going away, and pretending they don’t exist doesn’t accomplish anything.
The Stock Photography Question
But I keep coming back to another question:
What is the realistic alternative for an independent author?
For years, the only alternative was stock photography. And I’ve use stock photography. So do countless other authors and graphic designers.
The problem is that stock photography is, by definition, not unique. If you’ve worked around book publishing long enough, you’ve probably had the experience I have: you see an advertisement or book cover and immediately recognize the model or the graphic.
I’ve seen that wolf before. I’ve seen that image of a woman several times.
Sometimes you’ve seen her on three other book covers. The author didn’t commission that photograph. The photographer didn’t create it specifically for that book. The author or designer licensed an existing image and possibly altered, cropped, combined, recolored, or otherwise adapted it into something new. Sometimes the image is used just “as is.”
We accepted that solution because it made professional-looking design affordable.
So now I’m wondering:
Why do we automatically assume that using AI as a creative tool is less creative than using a stock image that may already appear on fifty other products?
That’s not a rhetorical question. The answer isn’t simple.
There are ethical questions surrounding AI that don’t exist in quite the same way with properly licensed stock photography. Artists have legitimate concerns about how their work is used and how creative industries are changing.
The Economics of Being an Independent Author
But there are economic realities on the other side, too.
An independent author might be able to hire a professional artist for a book cover—and probably should, when the budget allows.
But twelve Facebook graphics?
Twenty Instagram posts?
A Kickstarter update every week?
Ads that need to be refreshed because people stop noticing the old ones?
Most of us simply can’t commission original artwork every time we need another picture.
AI suddenly gives independent creators access to something we’ve never really had before: visual variety at a price we can afford.
That distinction matters.
I’m not interested in pressing a button and having AI be creative instead of me. I’m interested in using another tool that allows me to be creative.
I decide what I want the image to convey. I experiment. I reject images that don’t work. I change the concept. I combine the finished graphic with my own words, my own books, my own world, and my own marketing message.
Maybe We’re Asking the Wrong Question
In other words, I’m still making creative decisions. And perhaps that’s where the AI conversation needs to become more nuanced.
We’ve spent a lot of time asking: “Was AI used?”
Maybe we also need to ask: “How was AI used?”
There is a considerable difference between using AI to generate an entire novel and using it to brainstorm a title.
There’s a difference between asking AI to replace an illustrator you had already hired and using it to create a Facebook graphic you otherwise wouldn’t have.
There’s a difference between hiding AI use and being transparent about it.
And there’s a difference between letting a tool make your creative decisions and using a tool to carry them out.
I’m still figuring out where my own lines are. I suspect most of us are.
But I don’t think independent authors can afford—financially or creatively—to reduce this conversation about AI to just “yes or no.”
The technology is here. The ethical questions are real. So are the economic ones.
And somewhere between those two realities, authors are going to have to decide how these new tools fit into the way we create, publish, and promote our work.
For me, at least, that’s a much more interesting conversation than a label that simply says:
AI content.