A popular indie book cover contest decided to call it a day after it was found that the winning entry used AI. The book cover of M.V. Prindle’s Bob the Wizard looks dramatic and lives up to the storyline of a foul-mouthed Bob chasing his “family’s killer”… “through the realms of the mysterious Astraverse”.
The cover was perfect and it won the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off (SPFBO) cover contest, which is an annual event run by author Mark Lawrence. As soon as the winner was announced, there were questions around whether it was generated using AI tools, which is something SPFBO doesn’t allow. Sean Mauss, the winning artist, denied the allegation and went on to share details about how the drawing was made. Ultimately, Twitter users found a layer in the Photoshop file the artist had shared that proved that generative AI system Midjourney was used. It was a mishmash of Midjourney outputs.
What happened next? Mauss withdrew his submission and deactivated many of his social media accounts. Prindle, the book’s author, announced on Twitter: “There are a rather large number of artists who are insisting that the Bob cover was generated by AI. It’s becoming harder to stand by my artist. I’d just like to say that if it is an AI cover, I was misled and certainly would not have lied about it.” He has hired a new artist (Catrina Barquist) to replace the cover. And then came the final blow: Lawrence wrote in a blog: “I’ve woken up to compelling evidence that the cover was at least partly AI generated, breaking the rules of the contest. So, in addition to having been withdrawn, it’s now also disqualified under the existing rules. There won’t be a cover contest going forward.”