One of the projects I’m working on that will not be published under the JJ Rose name is a middle-grade novel. I recently went onto Fiverr and found an artist with a style I like, and talked to her a bit. She specifically said:

my artwork is digitally hand-drawn

I shouldn’t have any reason to doubt her, except that AI art is so prevalent these days that if you don’t want AI you have to specifically call it out.

She delivered an image (which I won’t share here because I don’t want that book to be associated with any JJ Rose books) which had some AI tells in it, so I ran it through some AI checkers, as well as through Claude. It overwhelmingly was flagged as AI.

Now, there is a possible reason for this: I generated an AI reference image and sent it to the artist so she’d know what I want. It is possible that she repainted/redrew the artwork and didn’t change it that much. But that seems unlikely.

I sent her a message on Fiverr with the results and, while I didn’t accuse her outright, I did say: “Can you comment on this?” I’m currently waiting for her reply. Claude gave me some things to specifically ask about and ask for if she claims it’s not AI. It’s possible to fake those, but it’s not likely someone would go through that much trouble for the amount I’m paying her (under $200). If it turns out it is AI, I will ask her for a refund or dispute with Fiverr; I can’t guarantee Fiverr will take my side, but hopefully they do.

One major tell:

The laces on this character’s shoe aren’t quite right. There’s an empty eyelet. Someone painting this for real wouldn’t miss that detail.

There are a few other concerning details, but I can’t share them without sharing too much of the image.

This is really disappointing.

I do have an artist I work with who I know doesn’t use AI — she does 3D renders for me — but she doesn’t do artwork in the style that I need. Her stuff is either more realistic (with actual models) or sci-fi-y in nature. She wouldn’t be the best choice for this project, although I know if I asked she would do the best she could.

Sigh. We live in the worst timeline.