The rise of AI and software like ChatGPT has everyone scrambling. And us authors are no exception!
But AI should be our friend, not foe.
I'm not going to use this post to discuss the potential demise of literature and art by the hands of AI. There are already so many articles published about this topic. And, for what it's worth, I don't think AI will "take our jobs" as writers. AI is a tool that we can use to expedite our outlining process or help us think of marketing ideas or provide sample blurbs that we can tweak. That's how we should be developing our relationship with AI—as partners rather than nemeses.
In this vein, there's another, more fun, way we can use AI.
I recently prompted Bing Image Creator and DALL-E to create settings of my books and "photographs" of my characters.
And the results were truly impressive! I had to revise my prompts several times and wade through several iterations until I came upon a decent image—but what AI was able to come up with was just incredible. I have no doubt that in a couple years (maybe even within the year), the technology will be advanced enough to deliver even more accurate results.
Here are scenes from my book Jackals Wild that I "created" with Bing Image Creator:
And here are scenes from my second book, Year of the Jackal:
When it came to creating the actual characters, it was much more difficult to match the image of what I had in my head to what AI delivered. I went through hundreds of iterations for some of my characters, tweaking the prompt and revising the wording (in some instances, Bing blocked my prompt because they thought it was inappropriate 😂).
Here are my characters, come to life with the power of AI!
I've shared these images on my pen name's social media. This is a fun way to offer something different to your followers and strike up conversation.
(Also, I don't yet have the audience base to receive fan art, so these images are me giving myself my own fan art, LOL)
Have you tried using AI to help with any part of your book?