I just added the following information to the About page of this site, but it’s important enough that it warranted a post of its own.
Updated July 10, 2026 to add a couple of footnotes for further clarity.
Full Disclosure Regarding AI Content on TGB
Discerning visitors will easily recognize that the themed graphics on this site—the blog banner, main page graphics, and recurring post graphics—are all AI-generated to some extent.
You are correct. All these images—or rather, the decorative text and divider line contained in these images that matches the blog banner, at least—were all generated in ChatGPT.
I used Photoshop to remove everything except the text in the banner image, uploaded it to ChatGPT, and prompted it to alter the text to read About Me, etc., to enable me to use that matching text for other graphics.
I then copied that text (as well as the decorative divider line, already ‘cut’ from the original AI-generated graphic) to make an overlay in Photoshop that I could use for the recurring post graphics templates (Book Reviews, Music Monday, etc.) that I’d previously put together on Canva. With the exception of the blog banner and the site icon/profile picture, all matching graphics were completed using free Canva templates. The blog banner and site icon/profile picture are 100% AI-generated via ChatGPT.
Why Did You Use AI-Generated Graphics?
My blog is a labor of love. The reviews I publish here generally take me anywhere from three to four hours to write and proofread, with upwards of another hour spent to create the necessary graphics, fine-tune the layout of each post, and find the relevant information about each book that I typically share on each post.
I do not receive any monetary compensation whatsoever for any of this. The only “perk” available to me is that I receive is a free copy of a book to read before it is published and available to the general public.
This is not a complaint. It’s a simple statement of fact.
This being the case, other than occasionally paying for a Canva subscription to enable me to access premium content, I mostly make use of free resources to create content here, as I cannot justify pouring money into something that I do as a hobby.
Here’s Where It Gets Tricky…
While I am comfortable with my decision to use AI to generate a themed set of graphics on TGB, I generally despise AI-generated content, particularly written AI content. Sounds grossly hypocritical, right? Yeah. I acknowledge that. 😳 I offer no defense on this; I can only say that people can often be contradictory.
So Your Main Graphics Are AI Slop… Anything Else?!
Absolutely not.
As I noted above, I especially despise written content that is AI-generated. (My block list on Facebook can attest to this—I block every page/profile I find that is lousy with AI-written garbage.)
Every review you see here—grammar mistakes and awkward phrasings galore—are all written and proofread (often-times with mixed success) by me.
And don’t let the use of the em dashes fool you1 (which I’ve recently come to discover is supposedly an “AI tell”). Any written content you see on TGB was written by me, or by an author who graciously consented to either an interview or a guest article.
I have made liberal use of em dashes throughout the history of this blog (which pre-dates AI), and will continue to do so in the future, because it is a useful bit of punctuation. It has long been a fixture of my preferred writing style (both for the blog, and informal writings on social media), and it will continue to be so. If that means uninformed people will assume I’ve used AI to write something, then so be it.
What About AI-Written, Narrated, or Illustrated Books?
I will never knowingly review and/or promote a book that is either written, narrated, or illustrated2 by AI. Nor, for that matter, will I publish author interviews or guest articles that I suspect have been “written” by AI.
Should I ever discover I have inadvertently promoted an AI-written, narrated, or illustrated book, or shared an interview or guest article that was “written” by AI, I will immediately remove the review, interview, or guest article from every platform I shared it on, and denounce it as AI slop. (If I can call my own blog’s main graphics “AI slop”, I have no problem referring to books as such.)
Final Thoughts on AI
AI can never be a replacement for the creativity and innovation of people. AI-generated art, writing, and music pales in comparison to what artists, authors, and musicians can create, no matter how much someone, myself included, might enjoy certain types of AI-generated content. A machine can never possess the emotional depth of a human being, and while it can make something pretty (like my themed blog graphics), it will never, ever be as good as something created by a living person.
This isn’t debatable—a machine can never reach, and isn’t capable of, that level of artistic perfection and intense emotional depth.
That said—whether we like it or not—I believe AI is here to stay. Yes, there are a myriad of issues surrounding the use of AI—including, among other things, environmental concerns and artistic theft—and those issues will take time (perhaps years) to sort out and regulate appropriately, but it’s not going anywhere, so we might as well get used to it.
What are your thoughts on AI-generated content? Feel free to share your comments below.
