Authors dumped from New Zealand's top book prize after AI used in cover designs

theguardian.com

6 points·Freak_NL··6 comments

These two books just got more attention than the winner of whatever that article was about, so great job!

It's for the 2026 awards. There is no winner yet.

They are both award-winning authors, so it seems debatable that this is necessarily wanted attention.

In my opinion having a hard line on AI use is fair, so I don't have an issue with that, but I think the awards committee messed up by putting out the guidelines so late. That said, I also think the publishers messed up big time by putting AI slop on the covers of these books...I mean they have to know that's repulsive to a large segment of the population, right? It's especially unfortunate because authors rarely have much input at all in designing the book covers, so in their enthusiasm to ride this hype train and I guess save a few bucks on graphic design, the publisher screwed over these authors.

In this case there is also the telling reaction from one of the authors (Johnson):

“Instead of talking about my book … and what the inspiration was, we are talking about bloody AI, which I hate.”

While it is generally well-known that authors often have very little say on the book covers, the publisher really messed up here.

> I mean they have to know that's repulsive to a large segment of the population, right?

They’re trying to cram AI into everywhere they possibly can, so even if they do know that people don’t like it, that doesn’t help the almighty bottom line, and so not using AI is never considered.

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