Readers Turn On YA Fantasy Author Colleen Houck Over Her Kickstarter Using AI Art For Her Tiger's Curse Novels

YA Fantasy Author Colleen Houck is crowdfunding an augmented version of her Tiger's Curse novels, and her readers aren't having it.

AI art seems to upset the left more than any real-world issue. Bestselling author Colleen Houck, YA fantasy author of Tiger’s Curse, launched a Kickstarter for her series featuring AI-augmented art, music, and film, and she’s getting savaged by her audience, with very few coming in to support the work. 

Every day, mainstream artists and writers make virtue-signaling posts about how they hate AI art or anything to do with AI. The standard rantings are usually about how AI will end artists' jobs. However, for most people who have used AI, what people find in reality is that AI art is too inconsistent to use in much of a commercial capacity. At best, it provides inspiration and conceptualization, making it easier for the average person to access their own creativity without having to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for the experience—something that is cost-prohibitive to many. 

With the inconsistencies in AI art, the obvious conclusion is that these complaining artists feel they can’t compete with inconsistent, poor work, which says a lot about their skills as artists more than anything. 

Colleen Houck is a New York Times bestselling young adult fantasy author, with her Tiger’s Tale series featuring two sisters adventuring as one of the two must ascend to the throne of their land. The first book won multiple awards, and she’s become a staple of the YA fantasy book industry since its release. 

She recently partnered with a new company called Lixandria, which specializes in using AI through an e-reader app they’ve developed to add art, music, and video to the ebook experience. With so much fully integrated multimedia, it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars with traditional art to create such a product. Still, through AI, it can add to a reader’s experience and imagination. 

Despite Colleen Houck's huge fanbase, the Kickstarter has only garnered nineteen backers as of this writing despite being open for several days. It has a goal of $50,000, with only $3,646 raised so far. The high dollar amount comes from two backers who purchased a reward to stay at Colleen Houck’s home for two nights rather than the product itself. 

Colleen Houk, meanwhile, has been posting about the Kickstarter on her author’s page, with several posts detailing how much it thrills her to see her words brought to life in art and video.

One of her posts reads, “I'm excited to see how this technology develops and opens new doors in storytelling! We live in a remarkable time!” It includes a video detailing the process, whereby a person from Lixandria talks about how the assets are designed with the author's direction.

Another post has an image of a tiger where the author says, “I love seeing my tigers in action. It seizes my imagination! This is one of my tigers from my new book, Tiger's Tale.”

Despite it being clear that Lixandria gets artists’ permission and authors’ direction for their AI use, making it a very ethical form of the technology, fan reaction has been vitriolic, turning on the author simply because artificial intelligence exists.

The author made many more posts on her page promoting the Kickstarter and the augmented e-book, but each was met with pushback because of the AI use.

One fan ignored the talk of the ethical use of AI, writing a long rant saying, “Unfortunately, if this is done using AI art, it is not much better than pirating an author’s books. AI uses stolen art from artists to compile these images.”  The rant continued for several paragraphs.

Another said, “I am honestly sick of seeing these done in AI. Please stop using AI.”

One fan went so far as to say, “Guess I’ll tell people to pirate the books in this series.”

Another said, “This is ruining the books imo. I can’t support someone who endorses AI.”

Finally one posted, “I loved this series but this reeks heavily of AI, which if so I’m ashamed you support /:”

Other commentors pointed out that people should watch the Kickstarter video for how AI was used, which doesn’t match what the angry comments say, but it doesn’t seem to influence the other fans.

Every post Colleen Houck makes gets flooded with posts from her fans attacking her, none paying attention to what the company actually said: that these were not generated from stolen art. It seems far too many people are uninformed about AI, which is merely a tool. Like any tool, it depends on how it’s used and whether it’s ethical or not. 

The YA author has been deleting several of the critical comments flooding her Facebook posts, and as of this writing, many of these screenshots have disappeared.

Regardless, Colleen Houck's risky use of technology to create an interesting innovation in ebooks has cost her YA fantasy readers. 

What do you think of YA fantasy author Colleen Houck getting savage for AI art for her Kickstarter? Join Fandom Pulse as a paid member to support our journalism and leave your thoughts in the comments!

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