Oh, believe me, I always wash clothes before I wear them, though I figured it wouldn't hurt to not do that this one time - but I was very wrong about that. 😆

Nah that's understandable XD Respect the attempt at least

The official cover itself actually does not use AI cover art - the cover was done by the publisher, and the artist received payment for their work. It's only the promotional images that use art from Adobe Firefly, which I was under the impression was ethically sourced? (At least, that's what I was under the impression was the case, though of course correct me if that's wrong.) And in general, I completely agree - I've paid for art of my characters to be done by actual artists when I've been able to afford to do so. But I'm also someone who doesn't have the financial resources to do that regularly, so I occasionally use Adobe Firefly to generate images of my characters for use in promotional images/just for fun. I totally get where you're coming from, but I'd hate to think you're boycotting my book for this reason.

With all of that said, I definitely don't want to send the wrong message to the artists I know (and those I don't), so I've changed the video thumbnail and the cover on my website to non-AI-generated art. I can't make any changes to the video itself since it's already been uploaded, but I will try to be more mindful of this issue in the future. I gain a lot of joy from seeing what my characters might look like via tools like Firefly, but I also understand that any use of AI to create images can be seen as a slap in the face to people who have worked their entire lives to perfect their own art. I'm not sure how to bridge this gap (as someone who wants to respect artists but also is broke pretty much all the time), but I'm going to continue pondering it and considering the thoughts of others on the subject.