Should We Penalise Bootstrapping Indie Authors for Unknowingly Using AI Art on Their Book Covers?
Why we should put down our pitchforks.
Written By Bella
The Oxford Review Literary Salon
Friday, 29 May 2026
Onus: The inexplicable burden that self-righteous people put on the helpless and less privileged in exchange for the glory of wallowing in their messianic complexes.
Should we crucify bootstrapping indie authors for unknowingly using AI art for their book covers?
True, we artists were thrilled to expose our parents’ erroneous assertion that ‘there’s no money in art’ as utterly misguided, imprudent and categorically wrong! Or were they?
If we embrace AI, our craft may prove altogether ephemeral. However, if we accept certain components of AI (like book covers), it will likely convert us from civilized upright walking, elegant humans into troglodytes.
Do we assimilate? Do we engage? Do we accept it begrudgingly? As both a painter and a writer, I am terrified and confused! And I’ll be damned if the words, ‘you were right’ slither out of my mouth.
What I do know: it is not our place to judge writers who employ artists to create book covers, only later to find that the cover was in fact generated with AI. I implore you to approach this with compassion, empathy and grace whilst considering that these writers have fallen victim to scam artists.
Before we put these unfortunate authors on the proverbial cross, I argue that we are required to investigate our own misfortune as a model for leniency and tolerance. We mustn’t devolve into barbaric uncivilized people when we disagree. Polite dialogue and measured debate will allow all sides to be considered.
Let us not use the straw man argument that real artists using the blood, sweat and tears to paint, draw or create magnificent works will suffer or be squeezed out. Your big famous publishing companies assimilated years ago by using Canva, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. Hand-painted or drawn art on book covers has been lost to convenience and affordability since the late 1980s.
So why must the small creative writer carry the burden of righting this wrong and swallowing the cost? In some ways, this technology is levelling the playing field for those who would never have the opportunity to market a book without AI.
We all want the less fortunate voices to be heard as loud and clear as those with privilege, do we not? To those morally superior people I say: hold on just one moment. Let’s recap your argument.
A recent post alerted the hoi polloi that ‘If your event has a flyer that uses AI, we won’t support you.... Use Canva like the rest of us!’
Canva? The app that has fully integrated AI in its software as a ‘design partner, building component, natural language and design styles’? Excuse us while we laugh. There is no Wizard of Canva whipping up magical options in their studio.
Psst, lean in for this one. The frontman behind Canva’s magic studio is none other than OpenAI/ChatGPT. And the crumbling of the self-righteous pedestal doesn’t stop there. You did know that Canva is accepting NanoBanana images to use in editable, layered Canva designs?
Oh wait, does that mean their argument to use Canva to create book covers instead of AI was just run over by reality? That same reality also backed up in reverse to hear the body thumping as it murdered your argument a second time.
Those of us who have been writing since the ancient birth of WordPerfect remember the chicken little panic and promises of the proverbial dead bodies of writers being dragged down the road to sacrifice.
For newbies, spellcheck, thesaurus and digital dictionaries were considered a devil’s tool meant to cause intellectual decline, promotion of laziness and the obsolescence of editors.[1]
Perhaps we are becoming categorically stupid. But here we are. As there is nothing new under the sun, we can all agree with Plato in Phaedrus where Socrates asserts that written text—rather than oral tradition—would create troglodytes (my words not his), and that it would give only ‘the appearance of wisdom… [and] provides a forgetfulness in the soul.’[2] He goes further, suggesting that the spoken word carries weight and consistency, and that the written word ‘rolls around promiscuously’.
Plato’s writings were prescient, and yet years later we are rolling in books, writing them, enjoying the controversy… and perhaps the promiscuity.
Yet somehow, we are still attacking indie authors with emotional and verbal pitchforks used by silk weavers of Lyon who brutally beat the humane, well intentioned Joseph-Marie Jacquard, dragging him to the Rhône to drown him.[3]
His crime? A desire to relieve the misery of overworked labourers. Why did they attack him? The Jacquard loom threatened wages and jobs. Sound familiar?
If one is fighting progressive technology through brutality, isn’t this devolution not evolution?
We must now ask the hard question: What is your solution when you have crossed a bridge that has crumbled behind you? You cannot wish for the bridge to rebuild itself, but what you can do is figure out how to survive.
The clever ones will find a path. Will you?
[1] The Surprising History of Spell Checkers—and What It Means for AI-Anxious Editors
[2] Plato’s Philosophical Answer to the Three Deficiencies of the Written Word
Love this. I don't enjoy the mob mentality and strongly disagree with it. As you say there's a growing list of tools that are acceptable today that were once seen as cheating.