A novel gets yanked from shelves for being 78% AI-generated. On the same day, Adobe ships a tool that turns your flat illustrations into rotatable 3D views. Same underlying technology. Completely different relationship with trust.
That contrast tells us more about where AI is heading for creative professionals than any product launch or think piece. The question isn't whether AI is useful — it obviously is. The question is whether you're being honest about what's yours and what isn't.
The book that broke the spell
Here's the story: a horror novel called Shy Girl by Mia Ballard was found to be potentially 78% AI-generated. Its US release was cancelled. Its UK publisher dropped it. Literary agents are now reporting a steady rise in AI-assisted submissions, and editors at major publishing houses describe a "cold shiver" running through the industry.
The really uncomfortable part? Detection tools are failing. Researchers are saying, quite bluntly, that the technology to reliably spot AI writing "simply doesn't work" — and it's only going to get harder as models improve.
This isn't a publishing problem. It's a creative industries problem. If you're a designer, illustrator, or visual artist, swap "novel" for "portfolio piece" and the same dynamics apply. We're entering a world where the output looks human, but the process wasn't — and there's no reliable way to tell the difference from the outside.
That should make all of us think carefully about how we present our work.
Adobe Turntable: AI doing the right kind of work
Now for the other side of the coin. Adobe has introduced Turntable, a new feature inside Illustrator that takes a 2D image and generates rotatable 3D perspective views from it. You sketch a product, an icon, a character — and Turntable gives you multiple angles without redrawing or jumping into dedicated 3D software.
This is genuinely useful. Anyone who's had to produce multi-angle product visuals, icon sets, or pitch illustrations knows the pain of manually constructing perspective views. It's tedious, time-consuming work that requires spatial reasoning but not much creative judgement. Exactly the kind of task AI should be handling.
What makes Turntable feel trustworthy is transparency. You drew the original. You're directing the output. The AI is doing production labour inside your existing tool, and nobody's pretending otherwise. There's no authorship question here — it's your design, rotated.
That's the line, I think. AI as production assistant, clearly labelled, working under your creative direction? That's fine. AI as ghostwriter, passing off generated work as human creativity? That's where trust collapses.
Krita reminds us that not everything needs AI
Meanwhile, quietly and without any AI fanfare, Krita has shipped updates specifically tailored for comic creators. New tools for sequential art workflows, built into a free, open-source application that's been steadily improving for years.
I find this worth celebrating precisely because it's unglamorous. No machine learning, no generative magic — just developers listening to a specific creative community and building what they actually need. Comic artists have particular workflow demands around panelling, inking, and lettering that generic tools don't serve well. Krita is investing in understanding those demands.
There's a lesson here for the broader tools market: sometimes the most valuable update isn't an AI feature. It's someone paying close attention to how real people actually work.
The bigger picture: honesty as a design value
What connects these stories is a single theme — honesty about process.
The publishing scandal isn't really about AI being bad at writing. By all accounts, it was good enough to fool editors. The problem is deception. Someone used a tool to generate creative work and presented it as their own human effort. That's a trust violation, and it undermines everyone working honestly in the same space.
In design, we're going to face this more and more. AI can generate layouts, illustrations, copy, even entire design systems. Some of that generation is genuinely helpful — like Turntable handling perspective views so you can focus on the actual design. But some of it will tempt people to pass off AI output as original creative thinking.
I don't think the answer is to avoid AI. That ship has sailed. The answer is to be transparent about where you used it and what role it played. Did AI generate the concept, or did it help you execute yours? There's a meaningful difference, and clients, employers, and collaborators deserve to know which one they're getting.
What this means for your practice
Here's my honest take on where we are:
Use AI for production work without guilt. Rotating perspectives, scaling assets, generating variations of your own designs — this is legitimate time-saving on mechanical tasks. Tools like Turntable are built for exactly this.
Be transparent about AI's role in your creative process. If a concept, illustration, or design direction came substantially from a generative model, say so. Your reputation is built on trust, and trust is built on honesty.
Don't assume detection tools will protect you — or catch others. The Shy Girl case shows that even sophisticated analysis can't reliably distinguish AI from human output. Which means the responsibility falls on us as practitioners, not on technology.
Invest in tools that serve your actual workflow. Whether that's Krita for comics or Illustrator for product visuals, the best tool is the one that understands how you work — AI-powered or not.
So basically: AI is a brilliant production assistant and a terrible secret collaborator. Use it openly, use it honestly, and make sure the creative thinking is still yours.