watching and waiting

(some links go to PF, because i wrote this post there and am cross-posting)

well, i'm bummed.

so you know how last year i participated in a publishing challenge and actually published (!) my first book (!!) thanks to it? well, it's a yearly event and i was really, really exciting to give it a go again. i had the signup date marked on my calendar and everything!

and now the mods have announced that they'll be using generative AI art covers this year.

like, good on them for announcing this a few months before the event. i'm glad they're transparent about this. but i am also bitterly disappointed, and i get more and more disappointed the more i think about. i guess i shouldn't be surprised: the mod responsible for making the covers is fully onboard with using AI art for book covers. 
they're still also going to do the full roster of book covers using stock art so people can choose not to get the AI art, they've said. that's like 100 covers, or possibly 120? i'm a bit confused.

for clarity, the event works like this:

100 people signup, and once signups close, a ranking spreadsheet is sent out and a site goes up with all the covers (at least 100, so everyone gets one) available. you rank the covers (ideally up to like 30 of them) and you'll be assigned one of the covers by the mods. you then must create a story based on that cover and publish it before the event deadline, or the cover rights revert to the organizers. it's an anon event, too, so you must use the pen name already on the cover (though you can change between a masc, fem name or initials) and you can not reveal who you really are until the event is fully over. it's also a no-spend event, so you're not allowed to spend money on anything. paid marketing graphics, paid beta readers, paid services etc is off the table. this is to give everyone in the challenge the same starting point.

up until this year, they used only stock art for the covers. mainly grandfailure, who is of course an amazing artist.

they've stated the reason for this shift as being because they're running out of grandfailure's stock art (120 covers a year (erring on the side of caution) * 5 years? 6 years? (the event has been running for a while) = 720 stock arts. grandfailure has like 2k images on shutterstock, though, so i think they're overreacting a bit too this.) and they don't trust other stock art because there's so much AI art on all those sites now anyway. so they might as well make the AI art themselves and they'll be sure which is AI!

which like. yeah. that's a stance you can take, i guess.

they also reuse a lot of the covers, though. like, last year only 38 or something of the 100 participants finished the challenge, and consequently i assume that like 70 of those covers should have gone back into the pool? that's how i understood it, and i know some of the covers have been in that pool for years. idk, maybe it's just me, but i think they're being a little bit pessimistic here about how quickly they'll go through grandfailure's art. idk, maybe they're combining images more than i thought? maybe they're discarding some covers? i truly don't know.

they keep saying in the discord server that they're open to alternatives, but every alternative presented gets rejected. like, it's very clear it's not open for debate this year. which, they can do that! it's their event! freedom and all that. but the tone is very defensive to me, and they definitly feel like they're trying to die on this hill.

they're going to make 100 stock art covers for this year, plus presumably 100 AI art covers. that's a lot of work if they're not a-okay with AI art.

so. i'm bummed.

i won't participate this year. i'm not okay with my writing being associated with AI art and more than that, an AI art positive event. even if i personally got a stock art cover, it'd still feel like i'm getting poisoned by association. i don't want to have my name connected to something like that. i don't want to support the authors that get the AI art covers, i don't want to hype an event that uses it, and i don't want to contribute to the prolification of AI art used for book covers in general.

i'll stick around in the discord server because i'm really, really curious how this will play out. last year, they got 100 signups within a single day. there's been quite a lot of people in the server announcing they won't participate due to the pro AI-policy being enacted, so i'm incredibly curious to see how many signups they get this year, and how quickly they'll hit 100. it seems like they don't think this will majorly effect the event, even if a lot of people leave. and it seems like they think there's quite a lot of people in server that are pro AI, more than there are people who are anti.

it's very 'well, they don't say they support generative AI-useage, but that's just because it's so frowned upon right now. i'm sure they're still here!' 

while some people have left, and told the mods they're disappointed and won't support this etc, quite a few people have also stated their support. and that they'll still participate. some of them said they'll just only rank the stock art and veto AI art (which the mods have said they'll consider that being an option), but imo that's weak fence-sitting.

i'm very bummed, and very bitter. and just honestly kind of sad.