Why Authors Should Stop Dismissing AI-Generated Images

Why Authors Should Stop Dismissing AI-Generated Images

We hear a lot about AI generated art these days, and opinions can be highly polarised. A substantial number of authors are instinctively wary of using computer generated images, feeeling that it may be depriving human artists of work, or devaluing the creative process, but its worth considering the positive role they may play.

The False Choice: Silence or Stock Photos

For years, independent authors had only two options for website imagery: spend heavily on bespoke artwork, or settle for generic stock photos that look nothing like the worlds they’ve created. Neither choice serves the stories we want to tell. AI breaks this false choice. It gives writers a way to visually evoke their fiction without draining their budget or surrendering to soulless, cookie-cutter stock imagery.

Atmosphere Matters

Readers don’t just come to an author’s site for a book blurb. They come for immersion. A visitor confronted with blank pages or mismatched images is less likely to linger, subscribe, or feel compelled to explore further. Atmospheric AI-generated illustrations; tailored to echo the themes of your work, can create the same sense of tone and texture that your prose delivers. This isn’t about dictating how readers imagine every detail, but about offering a glimpse into the mood of your world.

Context, Not Competition

Critics often argue that AI images compete unfairly with human artists. But authors using them for websites are not replacing artists; they are filling a gap where art would never have been commissioned in the first place. Few writers can afford to hire illustrators for every blog post, background banner, or newsletter header. For these small, supplementary uses, AI provides context where otherwise there would be nothing.

Branding Without Barriers

Professional cover art remains irreplaceable, but what about all the other visual spaces where authors need to show consistency, website headers, promotional graphics, blog illustrations? Without AI, most authors stitch together free stock images and hope for the best. With AI, you can align your branding across platforms, reinforcing your genre, voice, and atmosphere in ways that deepen your identity as a writer.

A Tool to Wield, Not a Threat to Fear

Ultimately, AI-generated images are tools. They don’t erase the value of human-made art, any more than photography did. They don’t dictate how an author should imagine their own worlds. What they do is expand the toolbox, offering writers new ways to communicate atmosphere and identity without prohibitive costs.

Using AI generated art in the way I use it on my website isn’t replacing the work of any human artist, it’s filling a space where, without it, no art would have existed.