Kia ora and welcome to !newzealand, a place to share and discuss anything about Aotearoa in general
Rules:
FAQ ~ NZ Community List ~ Join Matrix chatroom
Banner image by Bernard Spragg
Got an idea for next month's banner?
According to Wilson, the Ockham awards committee alerted publishers to an amendment to the eligibility conditions in August, outlawing AI covers. He thought the books he entered for the Acorn Jann Medlicott fiction prize were on safe ground but was belatedly told by the designer that the covers were heavily reliant on AI.
that's... not what cat teeth look like
lmao the teeth cat
The title of the book makes me think that was the point. Still looks uncanny as hell.
but was belatedly told by the designer
"Designer". Also, who the hell pays another person to generate images for them? Isn't that the point of this bullshit tech? To "democratize art", as the techbros keep claiming?
B.b.b.b.but It allows anyone without artistic talent to ~learn~ use AI prompting to produce something that they could never create themselves (without practice).
We’ll ignore how this makes the “prompt artist” completely reliant on a handful of corporations.
Cover art is important and these covers cheapen the books.
Why would you go to the time and effort of writing and publishing a book, only to use some AI slop for the cover?
I wouldn't consider reading a book with an AI generated cover, the fact that someone would half ass something so important doesn't say anything good about the book itself.
He hired a “designer” and the “designer” used AI instead of designing.
I don't see the original article link but I think it's this one: https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/11/17/ockhams-dump-books-from-awards-over-ai-covers/
The cat is supposed to have human teeth, and the books were disqualified because the rules say you can't use AI for the book and the cover is part of the book.
Aah that’s correct - the image replaced the original link - did not think that through.
Yeah so there's a little quirk. You can set a thumbnail image when posting a link to an article, but if you set an image in the image field then that gets posted as the main link. A thumbnail image has to be a URL in a dedicated Thumbnail URL field. Catches people out reasonably often.