My goal was to keep my novel completely AI free. I’m pushing it out the door now and hired an artist to make the book cover. I love his work, but it became clear that he had work/life balance issues and couldn’t finish the piece. After 3 months, I felt bad that I owed him money and paid for a clearly unfinished product (stupid decision on my part).
I was looking to hire another artist for touchups but they all wanted about the same cost as the original artist- far more than I’m willing to pay.
An “advanced prompter” and photoshop artist reached out to me and showed me what the cover will look like if he worked on it. He’s clearly really good at this, as it looks exactly like the original artist’s work but cleaned up and finished.
I’m stuck in a moral grey area. Would you consider it still real art if it’s been touched up by AI? Nothing overpoweringly AI, just small things like less blurry shading and more polished outlines.