Recently, I've wanted to replace all the AI art in my books with human-made art. After seeing the detrimental way generative AI has affected our society, our environment, our economy, our ability to think critically, and my own ability to tell truth from lie, I can no longer support it. So, I determined to begin by paying an illustrator to make a cover for my next book, coming soon!
I first tried to find an illustrator through Reedsy, because it seemed like a pretty legitimate service for authors. However, their system for finding a freelancer is rather inconvenient. You can't see how much illustrators will charge upfront, and instead they ask you to choose a handful of artists whose work you like, then tell them your budget. I severely underestimated how much cover art would cost, and every one of the illustrators declined because they charged much more than my budget. One kind artist told me that the normal cost is about $350 or more, and the rest didn't tell me what they normally charge.
So then I went to Fiverr. I tried them several years ago and got scared because the artist asked for the entire text of my children's book before telling me how much he would charge for his services. I figured this time, I only wanted cover art, so no one would be able to steal the entire text of my book and sell it as their own if all they were working on was the outside of it.
I found someone who was willing to do the paperback, audiobook, and ebook cover art as well as some social media announcement art for $150. This sounded like a good deal, and I liked the style of art I saw on his profile. He was also super nice when I accidentally accepted the ebook cover as the final product before he'd sent everything else, and still sent the rest. I've run what he gave me through several AI image detectors and they all say it's most likely digitally edited art, not AI-generated.
So, now that I'd had a good experience with Fiverr, I decided to try hiring an artist to redo the art for my children's book, Dragons Don't Wear Shoes. I found someone whose style looked nice, and they said they could do the full ebook and paperback book including formatting for $350. I informed them I didn't want any AI-generated art and they agreed.
I can't show you what they sent me because, legally, I had to delete it. So, I will have to describe it instead.
The first two pictures they sent were of a dragon wearing shoes, and a unicorn wearing a hat. The thing was, the unicorn had two horns.
What human artist accidentally draws two horns?
I immediately reiterated that I didn't want AI images in my book, and she assured me these were just first drafts and she would make the book how I wanted.
The next set of pictures were better, but I noticed a rock that was rather odd. There were several caves and rocks that looked fine, but this one tall, thin rock had a hole in the middle, like it was trying to be a cave. The thing about generative AI is, it will sometimes mix two ideas together in one. That's how you get stuff like this, where the woman's legs become the man's arms.
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| Kevin Spano Lépinay |
I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe in this new age of technology, artists get their ideas from prompting AI and then they actually draw a picture based on what it gives them. So I didn't mention the rocks and just told her a few other details I would like in the next round.
What she sent back was almost the exact same picture, cave rock and all, but with the other details I'd mentioned added in.
At this point, I realized she wasn't just getting ideas from the AI, she was planning to use these AI-generated images as her final product. I asked to cancel the order because I didn't want what she was making and we should both stop wasting each other's time and move on (although she probably didn't use much time on making those pictures).
Now, on Fiverr, if you want to cancel and order and get a refund, they ask that you first try to work things out with the artist, and if that fails, you initiate a dispute and then the other person has to accept the cancellation. Unfortunately, this artist refused the cancellation.
We messaged back and forth for a couple of days. I tried to be as diplomatic as possible as I accused her of using AI. I didn't call her a charlatan, I just said I didn't want AI in my book and that was all she was providing, so things simply wouldn't work out. She kept saying it wasn't AI, even saying she could produce a video of her coloring the pictures. Two problems with this: one, I don't care if you can color the picture, I want you to draw them. And two: AI can also create speed paint videos of any picture you give it, so such a video is not proof the picture is human-made.
I tried again to get her to cancel the order, telling her I wouldn't pay for AI images, and she declined, asking me to point out where the AI was. I told her about the cave rock, and that I ran the image through several AI image detectors and they all came up highly confident it was AI-generated. Her reply? She asked me to describe the kind of cave I wanted and she would make it.
At this point I knew there was no point in arguing. Either the language barrier was too insurmountable and she didn't understand the problem, or she was desperate to hold on to easy money. Maybe a bit of both. I decided to go through Fiverr customer support, and they canceled the order within 24 hours and refunded my money, with the understanding that I couldn't keep any of the art I had received until that point.
But there's another layer to this story. As I searched for a new illustrator who would honor my request to keep AI out of their art, I took pictures from their example portfolios and ran them through AI image detectors before even trying to request a quote. One in particular announced over and over that they were 100% human. The picture below sums up my findings.
Even people who advertised themselves as human-only were doing so with AI-generated images!
Then I discovered Pro Services on Fiverr. These are vetted professionals that have been reviewed by a Fiverr team. Looking through a few of these profiles, I realized quickly that I should have known the price and turn around time offered by the first freelancer was too good to be true.
The sad fact is, to get a real, human artist, you are most likely going to pay, at a minimum, $100 per illustrated page, and that's usually without a background.
As a fledgling indie author, prices like that can drive you to completely give up on your anti-AI morals.
I'm not saying that professional artists should drop their prices. They know their worth and they should own it. But I wouldn't judge someone if they felt they had no other choice when they're broke and first starting out in this business to go with cheap, fake art because that's all they can afford.
Overall, the experience has been extremely discouraging. It feels like half of the freelance artists out there are charlatans trying to make a quick buck off of AI, and the other half are way out of my price range.
For now, this is the end of the story. I haven't given up on the endeavor, and I have a few ideas of what to do, but I don't want to reveal them until they've actually worked out. Hopefully I will have an update in a few months.
In the mean time, here are a few tips for finding your own human artist, and detecting fake ones:
1. Human art takes time. If your illustrator offers to finish illustrating an entire book within a couple of weeks, they are probably using AI to do so.
2. Human art isn't cheap. Most real illustrators charge hundreds of dollars for just one picture, and thousands for a full book.
3. Human art makes mistakes, but it still makes sense. If you notice weird things like tall, skinny rock caves or two horns coming out of a unicorn's head, that's not a first draft. That's an AI image before inpainting.
4. Human art is consistent. When you look at the portfolio of a given artist, their style remains mostly the same. Artists that use AI can change their style based on what their user wants, and so pictures from different project will sometimes look like a different artist made them.
5. If you're still unsure, try a few AI image detectors, like ZeroGPT or WasItAI.
