I’ve read a lot of posts on social media and in videos on YouTube where writers and artists complain about the use of AI and how creative people weren’t consulted about their work being mined by large tech companies to train their large language models. Everyone’s entitled to an opinion of course but I haven’t come across anyone who has suggested anything proactive and positive creatives and the consumers of their art can do about this. To be honest I don’t really believe there is much any individual can do. However, I do believe creative people, the companies they use and set up and the readers and art viewers who consume their work can show their support for people who don’t use AI in their work.

I’ve been working toward independently publishing my first book and after reading another writer on a FB group railing against the use of AI by others I decided to ask Jade my cover designer (Steam Powered Studios) to develop some logos I could place on the spine and on the back cover of my book to simply declare that, as far as is possible in this day and age, no AI was used in the creation of the work. I include in that not just the writing but the cover and editing of the work. You can see how I’ve used these logos on the cover by clicking on the link on my site the post about the cover of Seeing Colours.

In addition to the general logo that I plan to put on the rear cover of Seeing Colours I had her design a small spine logo as well. I thought the light bulb was quite cute and I couldn’t really choose between the two, so I chose both as my favourites.

And finally I altered the main logo to give people who aren’t creatives but who read and view work by others a way of support my efforts to declare myself an AI free zone.

Along with these logos I asked her to add a #HIRulez to allow people to label and share these on other social media sites.

I don’t want to attack others who find through their own circumstances that AI helps their writing or editing process, but I did want something that I could use to declare that I don’t personally use these tools in my work. You’ll notice I make no mention of AI, companies who might be the generators of this technology or other creative people who might use such tools. Artificial Intelligence might be the big new thing, but Human Intelligence has been around for a whole lot longer and I’m proud that good or bad, my work is my own in the old-fashioned sense of the word.

I own the copyright to these logos and I’m happy for others to use them as they see fit free of charge. I’m not going to police the use of them, but I can supply you with fully separable Hi Res versions of these that don’t have the white backdrop as a Photochop psd. file if you’d like to contact me at trevorhodges.author@gmail.com. If you share the logos or the post I made about them could you direct people to my website or email if they want further information?

Thanks

Trevor Hodges