An Ethical Lightbulb Moment
My original Lightbulb Moments in Human History books were written and edited traditionally. They relied heavily on licensed stock illustrations, which I spent many hours editing and Photoshopping to look the way I wanted.
Then one of the world-changing innovations my books are built on occurred in real time: generative AI went mainstream.
It was a little like being at ground zero of the Industrial Revolution. Almost overnight, AI tore through the publishing world, which is still coming to grips with the technical, business, and ethical implications.
Given how much of my work has been built on illustrations, becoming an early adopter of AI art was a no-brainer. If I wanted an image of Julius Caesar eating a pizza, it was mine in moments.
I knew the ethical arguments, but I kidded myself that because I extensively hand-edited the AI images, my skills with Procreate, Photoshop, and good old pen and paper somehow made the result honest.
I mean, was Gutenberg wringing his hands when the printing press replaced scribes? I’m betting he wasn’t.
So why should I?
But even my flawed logic knew that wasn’t quite the same thing: Gutenberg’s technology hadn’t been trained on the unpaid, uncredited work of countless scribes.
The bottom line was, no matter how much editing work I did afterwards, the starting point was still AI-generated.
Online marketplaces filled up with books created with minimal human input. What had once seemed exciting began to feel like cheating. And cheap. And a bit fishy.
AI art stopped amazing me and started annoying me.
Belatedly, I decided there were uses of AI I could no longer stomach.
And that left me with a problem.
My Peaby’s Civilization series has, to date, relied on human-edited but essentially AI-generated cartoons and illustrations. And at the time of my decision, the book you hold in your hand was 99% complete.
Redrawing all the illustrations by hand would take at least a year. A year I could spend writing new books without AI art.
So, I decided to hold my nose and publish AI art one last time.
Throughout this process, I found myself wrestling with the same question my characters repeatedly face: what is an ethical use of a new technology?
This is where I’ve drawn the line.
Here’s what I’ll do from now on...
I will continue to use AI as an editorial tool: to challenge ideas, pressure-test the logic of my plots, find holes, and suggest alternatives I almost inevitably ignore.
I will still occasionally use AI to create guide images of my own hand-drawn characters, which I then redraw completely.
The important difference is that those AI images are image-to-image scaffolding based on my own hand-drawn characters and never appear in the finished work.
To that end, after this book, no AI-generated image will appear in any of my books.
AI will still catch my spelling and grammar mistakes.
But the illustrations, words, and voice will always be mine.
That is more than defensible.
It is ethical.
S.E.W.