Dear Readers,

I owe you an apology. I messed up.

As you likely know, AI-generated texts and images have become a bit of plague in recent times. We’ve committed to not using such works, but, even when one is diligent, one can be fooled—as it seems we were. The original cover of the April issue was an image we licensed from Shutterstock from “Ardea-studio” (image ID 2284604323), which, after further review today, I’m pretty confident it is indeed AI-generated.

We used to use Adobe Stock, but switched to Shutterstock last year because Adobe was slow to roll out an AI-generated filter, but Shutterstock had one. Shutterstock’s filter is not all that great, it turns out, and we recently decided to switch back to Adobe Stock because they have since implemented a filter, and it seems to be much better.

A reader emailed one of our vendors today to inquire if they’re okay selling titles with AI-generated art, and they passed that information along to me. I investigated, and it is now my opinion that the reader was correct.

Since AI-generated images became rife, we have been seeking ways to ensure we don’t accidentally license one. There are AI-generated image detectors you can find online, but I tested some and did research, and it seemed—at least at the time—that they generated a fair amount of false positives, so I haven’t relied on using those.

Once this reader complaint came to light, I ran the image through Adobe Stock’s “Find Similar Image” feature, and that found a fair number of images that look very similar, from a variety of users, and Adobe Stock’s filter has them flagged as AI.

I thought we were safe with this image, because the Ardea-studio user’s profile looks like a real graphic artist/designer’s profile to me—though, I note that when I look up that particular image now, it says it is no longer available. This user has their email address in their profile, so I have emailed them, but I didn’t want to wait to reissue a new version of the issue with a new cover. Perhaps there’s some reasonable explanation—like they posted it for sale, then reconsidered the ethics of selling AI-generated art and took it down—and perhaps not. Hopefully the user will reply and let us know; in which case, I will update this note on the Lightspeed website and also include a note in the May issue.

We’ve replaced the April cover with another cover image; the new cover is by Tithi Luadthong (aka Grandfailure). So you’ll know which image you’re looking at—the old (AI) cover or the new cover—I’ll point out that the new cover is the one of the dragon with a small sorcerer in the foreground.

In any case, I deeply apologize for this error, and I will of course strive to not let it happen again. We have previously committed—and remain committed—to not use AI-generated works in the magazines, and we deeply regret that we accidentally let it happen.