Artists and book lovers are complaining that the cover of American author Sarah Maas’ famous fantasy novel House of Earth and Blood was generated by AI. This is reported by The Verge.

Readers noted the Adobe Stock link to the wolf illustration on the cover. The artwork corresponds to an image created by an Aperture Vintage user and marked as AI-generated on Adobe’s website. This caused criticism both of Maas and of one of the leading independent publishers in the world – Bloomsbury Publishing.

Bloomsbury became a household name in the UK after it began publishing JK Rowling’s Harry Potter franchise in 1997. Maas is now one of Bloomsbury’s leading authors, best known for her young adult fantasy Throne of Glass, A Court of Thorns and Roses and Crescent City. The author has sold more than 12 million of her books, many of which made it to the New York Times bestseller list. She did not acknowledge the origin of the image to House of Earth and Blood, but praised the cover design on her Instagram page.

The situation with the Bloomsbury cover has fueled artists’ concerns that publishers may abandon their services in favor of AI-generated images.

“Bloomsbury is one of the major publishing houses,” said freelance artist Kala Elizabeth on Twitter. “They CAN afford to hire real illustrators instead of purchasing Adobe stock, which is where this AI content is from.”

We remind you that some stock image services have banned illustrations created by artificial intelligence to avoid copyright disputes. But Adobe welcomes AI on its Adobe Stock platform, provided certain criteria are met. For example, content must be clearly labeled as AI-generated. And authors should read the terms of any AI tools they use to create images to make sure they have all the necessary rights to license them for commercial use.