On May 4th, @PaulSmithBooks achieved the indie author dream when his book cover broke through and was seen by hundreds of thousands. The responses were spirited and enthusiastic, ranging from “𝐘𝐨, 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐀𝐅,” to “𝐖𝐓𝐅 𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐲𝐨𝐮?”
How did he do it? Easy. He made the main character an AI-generated depiction of a Black woman with a chimpanzee’s face.
But I have a confession to make: Paul isn’t the only one who has created racist AI images to promote their novel.
𝐈 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐬 𝐰𝐞𝐥𝐥…
Now, I could just give in to the temptation and join the dogpile. Paul’s responses to the controversy have been a masterclass in deepthroating your own foot. It got so bad that the DIY publisher had to issue a statement and promise to hire a "diverse team" to vet submitted books.
Considering their current vetting process appears to be one of those drinking bird toys hitting “return” a la Homer Simpson, that might be a good idea.
But then I remembered Jesus had a whole thing about throwing rocks, and… Well.
Okay.
Did I create an image of a Black woman as a chimpanzee? No. God no.
It was a… monkey… And that, technically, is not an ape.
Did I have the bare minimum of common sense to realize I should probably keep this to myself? Yes, obviously.
Also, no, because I'm clearly writing about it.
Still… Please, if you will allow me some grace, I will explain myself. Just put down the pitchforks for one second.
For context: in my upcoming sequel, Take Back the Deep Estate, there’s a character named Li-Fang. She’s a Yeren, a Chinese sasquatch that basically looks like a ten-foot-tall, luxurious golden langur monkey.
Sidenote: Just look at these guys. I friggin love these guys! They totally give off "Oh God, it's only Tuesday" vibes.
One of the jokes I make is that somehow this cryptid has an OF page, and it gave me an idea. Not a good idea. But an idea that made me giggle, which unfortunately translates, in my brain, to a good idea.
You know those spam accounts trying to con guys into subscribing to an AI girl’s fake 0nlyF𝐚ns page? I could make one of those. But instead of an AI Barbie of a dubious age claiming to be an Epstein victim, it’d be for a sexy Bigfoot.
That’d be hilarious.
So I started messing around with AI to create a photorealistic version of Li-Fang.
Immediately, I hit a snag. AIs aren’t actually creative. What they’re good at is predicting pixels and taking known concepts and squishing them together into a neural network collage.
They struggle to create anything truly novel. If the AI has no concept of a Furby, you have to describe it, and what you’ll probably end up with is a deformed cat, because it knows cats.
In my first attempt, it understood what a golden langur looked like. It knew how to create a sasquatch. But telling it to blend the two together? It gave me Guy Fieri and the Hendersons. A Bigfoot with bleached fur.
So I nixed any reference to sasquatch and went with “golden langur with humanoid features,” emphasizing a more slender, feminine body so it wouldn’t default to a stocky Bigfoot.
…𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐠𝐨𝐭 𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐚𝐬𝐭.
The AI, in its infinite laziness, interpreted my prompt as: “So you want a monkey with a human face pasted over it. Got you.” Then it looked at the darker skin tones of a golden langur and went, “Well, she’s obviously Black,” and started filling in the rest.
I immediately started slamming the delete button, then took a hammer to my hard drive just to be safe.
So when I saw Paul’s cringey cover, I actually chuckled, because I knew exactly what happened. The AI did the inverse for him, lazily slapping a chimpanzee face onto a woman, and because she had dark skin, it coded her as Black and started making assumptions about her features, like her hair texture.
Ultimately, I think the AI was the racist in the cover design. Paul Smith’s contribution was just being painfully oblivious and awkwardly, glaringly white.
So goddamn white.
Canadian white.
Which is the Vantablack of whiteness.
It didn’t help that he kept doubling down when people pointed it out with, “Nah-uh, it can’t be racist because I’m not racist.”
When that didn’t work, he tried to play the victim. That went as well as Kevin Spacey coming out to avoid #MeToo.
Then, like a Republican congressman caught having sex in a LaGuardia men’s bathroom, he pivoted to, “I’ve talked it over with my family and now understand what I did was maybe wrong.”
Which naturally led to everyone asking, “Oh, NOW you understand? You’ll listen to your white family, but not the countless women of color who told you this was racist?”
And here I am, quietly oofing in the background.
I’m totally not gooning to a ’squatch thot.
Nosirree.
Oh, and Take Back The Deep Estate is coming out June 2nd. You can pre-order it now.
Welcome to the Deep Estate (Book One) Is also free this week on Kindle.