Promo photo of Sarah J. Maas “scraped” from Bloomsbury’s website. Not AI-generated. We don’t think.

Many questions are being raised among all kinds of artists and fans of art– including writers and readers– over this article which appeared online in The Verge. It definitely does appear that the cover art used for the novel House of Earth and Blood was AI-generated. If so, this would be a betrayal of many of Maas’ fans, but also a betrayal of the pronounced ideals of her publisher, Bloomsbury. After all, Bloomsbury even has a “Modern Slavery Statement” on its website, in which they endorse “high ethical standards” which require “that the management implements proportionate risk based procedures that protect the reputation” of Bloomsbury and its subsidiary companies.

Does that protection of their reputation extend to not using cut-rate stock images that were AI-generated in order to save a few dollars, or pounds, whichever the case may be? Instead of– gasp!– employing an actual human artist?

Dare we call the esteemed Bloomsbury Publishing Group cheap?

And Sarah J. Maas is their most successful, most profitable author, by far. She alone may be keeping the entire enterprise going. You’d think Bloomsbury would reward her devoted readership by spending a minimal amount of funds on a real artist.

Sarah J Maas has, by one account sold 26 million of her novels, and is worth $40 million. One would think she’d demand something more as presentation of her work than a cover which could be done by any twelve year-old with a chatbot. As it is, her novel looks like something which might be bought at the nearest Dollar store.

Yes, we’re living in sad cultural times, we really are.

-K.W.