News: Mother and Daughter Novelists release Young Adult novel using A.I. Art

A conversation about books, technology, art, and artificial intelligence

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES, February 7, 2023  — E. Hughes is the author of some 20 or so books, spanning several genres from romance, science-fiction, nonfiction, poetry, to children’s books. Her first, was Beyond the Plain, a book of poetry published in the early 2000s. In just over the last year, Hughes released Sixth Iteration (a science-fiction novel about artificial intelligence), Time and the Multi-Universe: A philosophy of time and time travel, her fourth and fifth Penelope children’s books (Penelope: Don’t be Afraid and Penelope: Holiday Cheer), and recently co-authored a young adult graphic novel, Garden of Secrets, with her now adult-aged daughter, A.J. Hughes, also a novelist and author.

Following in her mother’s footsteps, A.J. wrote her first book in high school, but wasn’t ready to publish until well into her second year of college as a liberal arts major. Her first book was a collection of supernatural short stories, A Walk on the Other Side. A.J. would follow-up with four more novels during the height of the pandemic to pass the time: A Day of Rain, A Life: Worth Living, Everlasting, Us, and a recently released humor book, Life as a Marshmallow. A.J. can see her growth as a writer with each book. Last month in January, her mother, invited A.J. to work on an experimental project involving A.I. art. A.J. was reluctant at first, because of social media backlash against A.I. art. Hughes, unaware of the controversy was ready to forge ahead.

“Young adult novels is not my medium. A.J. reads a lot of graphic novels and manga, so I felt it was more her forte than mine. The story was more or less my vision. I wanted to tell a visual story using this new and exciting medium. I wanted to explore the boundaries of that.”

Hughes remains fascinated by artificial intelligence. Her last fiction novel, Sixth Iteration (released, November 16, 2021) explored the boundaries of artificial intelligence and how humanity defines what is real.

Garden of Secrets wasn’t Hughes’ first experience with A.I. art. In 2015, she published a graphic novel/comic book using still images from machinima animation software. The software integrated some A.I features, like improvised facial expressions and emotions that she was able to capture using snapshots from within the program. She calls it “entirely experimental.”

Today’s A.I. art is significantly more advanced. There are several platforms available that offer versions of image-generators from DALL-E to Stable Diffusion. The programs allows its end-user to upload an image that A.I. can use to generate or duplicate, a version of the uploaded image. This has led to backlash from the art community on social media over the rights of artists and their original artwork. Developers teach A.I. how to generate art using deep learning algorithms, and billions of illustrations and photos from across the internet.

Through the use of text, the program is given written instructions to carry out by the end-user, describing what the creator would like the image generator to produce. This is what intrigued Hughes. She wasn’t interested in generating images from artwork that already existed. Hughes is an abstract painter and designer and would not want her paintings or artwork used to create A.I. art. A.J. is also an artist, specializing in still life art, a skill she acquired in college.

“Society should learn to embrace technology rather than fear it. This doesn’t mean that technology is without implications. When the first wave of eBooks were released, I recall some early backlash. Everyone thought it marked the end of print books. Especially as eBooks began to dominate the market. Today, print books and eBooks manage to co-exist. I remember when people were afraid computers would take their jobs. In some cases it did, but it also created other opportunities and new markets for people to explore. I didn’t panic when I learned A.I. was capable of writing novels. In fact, there are several novels already written by A.I. I am able to coexist with this new technology. While I think uploading artwork and creating a derivative of that work is untoward on every level and a clear example of copyright infringement, I also feel an art style cannot be copyrighted. It is not copyright infringement to learn from other artists or their artwork. Ask an artist about their style of art and where they learned it. Surrealism, abstract, impressionism, post-impressionism, realism, and renaissance art, among many others were created by artists whose works existed long before we did, and we learned from their art. We copied their styles and made it our own. That to me, is what A.I. is doing now.”

E. Hughes and her daughter A.J. hopes Garden of Secrets will be be an inspiration to young readers. Hughes worked with illustrators on her previous children’s books and will continue to do so. “Having the ability to generate art on demand, doesn’t change or diminish what human artists are capable of creating. There are aspects of humanity that artificial intelligence will never have the ability to duplicate.”

Author, metaphysics philosopher (time), artist, and business executive E. Hughes, is the author of Time and the Multi-Universe: A philosophy of time and time travel (nonfiction), novels Sixth Iteration, Disappear, Love and other novels, in addition to the Penelope children’s book series. Hughes is also a hobbyist jewelry designer, collector of tea sets, and gardener. Find new and previous book releases by E. Hughes via ehughesbooks.com

A.J. Hughes is the author of Everlasting, Us, Life as a Marshmallow, A Life: Worth Living, A Day of Rain, and A Walk on the Other Side. A.J. writes sci-fi fantasy, humor, slice-of-life, and supernatural suspense. A.J. is also an artist and enjoys painting, sketching, and creating crafts. You can find A.J. online: @Ajhughesauthor Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @a.j.hughesauthor, and TikTok @a.j.hughesauthor