Feud Over AI Book Cover Has Authors at Each Other’s Throats

The debate over artificial intelligence in publishing came to a head Monday, with a testy back-and-forth between writers and a publisher leaving one author in “absolute devastation” after a slew of “hate messages started rolling in.”

The feud centered around the cover art used for The Stricken, a novel authored by Morgan Shamy and published by CamCat Books. Shamy teased the book in a video early in July, showing off its cover art—a woman standing with her eyes closed, overlaid with a fictional city’s skyline.

That cover was found to have been created largely with artificial intelligence, according to novelist Rebecca F. Kenney. Kenney shared as much online—to Shamy’s dismay—and called out CamCat for being “harmful to the creative community,” sparking a massive debate among authors and those in publishing.

“Please add CamCatBooks to the list of publishers who knowingly use AI art for their covers,” Kenney tweeted on July 1. She added a disclaimer that Shamy told her in a direct message she did not know the cover art’s origins.

Included in Kenney’s thread was a string of direct messages between her and CamCat’s official Twitter account, with the Colorado-based publisher saying it was standing behind its choice. It also denied AI was used for the cover’s main component.

In one screenshot, Kenney sent the publisher a photo of the woman used on the cover. The same graphic is listed as being “generated with AI” and remains available for anyone to use on Adobe Stock’s website.

The messages, which The Daily Beast could not independently verify, also showed CamCat claiming there was “misinformation” in Kenney’s accusations. Instead, the publisher insisted the cover was “created by a talented artist who worked meticulously to capture the essence of the story.”

In another screenshot shared by Kenney, CamCat clarified that its artists regularly use stock images in their work and conceded that most covers are “not original illustrations.” It cited TJ Barnwell as one of The Stricken’s cover artists, saying he “uses AI to create his art the way many writers and editors use spell check and Grammarly to aid their (still very human) skills at copyediting and proofreading.”

Kenney tweeted that using AI isn’t comparable to spell check and Grammarly—tools used to tweak and refine original work, not the other way around.

“They're standing by the ‘artist’ who is just someone entering prompt words into the AI machine until it scrapes together pieces of other art and spits out a halfway usable image,” Kenney wrote.

That thread, along with some since-deleted TikTok videos, seemingly put Shamy under the gun. In a rambling Twitter thread Monday, she said she’d been “bombarded with hate messages.”

Shamy said she had “NO idea” her book’s cover was generated by AI and she’d been working with CamCat to have it changed. As of Tuesday, however, the book remains available for pre-sale with the same controversial cover art.

Shamy then zeroed in on Kenney, alleging her posts were “dragging” her name “through the mud” without knowing the whole story—that she was working behind the scenes to get the cover changed.

Shamy appeared to be particularly peeved that Kenney, three weeks after her initial post calling out CamCat, had turned her focus on Shamy, insinuating her initial condoning of AI use wasn’t met with swift action. Kenney wrote in an “update” on July 28 that she’d been blocked on social media by Shamy.

“The publisher refuses to change the cover and I have now been blocked by this author,” Kenney wrote last week. “After she claimed to care about AI covers being an ethical issue. Listen, authors, if you are going to publicly use AI art on your covers, you should be able to discuss it publicly.”

Debate over AI has taken center stage in the publishing world this year, with similar instances of AI-generated cover art—including an AI-generated cover for The New York Times best seller House of Earth and Blood—drawing outrage.

CamCat did not respond to a list of questions sent by The Daily Beast on Tuesday. Kenney and Shamy did not respond to interview requests