Did I use AI on Mirov?

The book's increasing popularity on Twitter/X has led to some questions I never saw coming. The main issue is AI, particularly regarding the book's cover.

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Here is a complete rundown of AI and my novel, Mirov.

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Did we use AI on the book's blurb?

 

No! NO! Not just NO, but FUCK NO!

 

As I wrote on Twitter:

 

I wrote this novel for at least 3.5 years, covering 206K words and 666 pages. A real-life former Marine and published author edited the book. Every word of my book, INCLUDING THE BLURB, is formed by human hands and minds—period, end-of-story. 

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*****

I won't even entertain the question of AI and the contents of my book. Blood, sweat, and tears are what got Mirov written. Countless hours, late nights, weekends, everything I have went into the book. 

*****

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Did we use AI on the book's cover?

 

As I wrote on Twitter: 

 

The book cover uses AI mixed with the work of a graphic designer. It was extremely difficult to find a designer who would do the book cover from scratch, and the ones I did find were out of my first-time-author-starving-artist budget. So, we used AI to get the character looks that I wanted, and then the designer compiled it, did the work, formatting it, etc. I paid the designer to the best of my abilities. He was happy to do it, and I was happy to have his help. I think it looks great, and until I ran ads on X and dug up the underworld trolls and keyboard tough guys, everyone else told me they loved it, too. If you don't like AI art, I get it. I would have rather used an artist's free-hand drawings my damn self. But, see above. You can only do what you can do.

 

I feel I have been transparent on the issue of AI. At some point, you either like it or you don't. If you don't like it, that's your right. The above is the story of my book cover and how it came to be.

 

Thanks,

David C. Hoke