Dinosaur in a tutu? Anne Rooney

Spinosaurus by Adobe stock, 2025

I've been wondering again if I will have to give up this job of writing children's books and do something entirely different (and AI-proof). Having just got used to the idea that my job now consists of writing in a way as unlike AI as possible so that I can't be easily replaced by publishers cutting corners, I've stumbled into the next challenge. And I'm not sure there's a way around this one. 

Spinosaurus by Nobu Tamura, 2024

 

  

See that dinosaur above? It's supposed to be a Spinosaurus. Spinosaurus, as any 6-year-old can tell you, had a sail along its back. Along, not across, like a skirt.  This is what a Spinosaurus looks like (see right). Adobe have the audacity to label their rendering 'Realistic portrayal of a Spinosaurus'. Not realistic, not even biologically possible.

A significant part of my work involves finding reference images from which an illustrator can work to produce the art we need in the book. 

The reference images are important, as otherwise the illustrator or picture researcher (who might not know much about the subject) is likely to go online and find pictures that are out of date, wrong, or — a new threat — ridiculous AI. So my job is to provide them with pictures that are NOT like the 'realistic' Spinosaurus Adobe will dish up. Adobe, once upon a time, would have been considered a reasonably reliable source. 

Nothing like a Stegosaurus

Here's another. I needed a picture of a Stegosaurus skeleton. This, or something like it, is offered all over the place. I hope I don't have to tell you it is nothing like a Stegosaurus skeleton. A Stegosaurus is the one with plates all along its back, a herbvivore with a small head, and no fierce, meat-eating teeth. There's a proper Stegosaurus skeleton for comparison below this travesty.

Fortunately, I know what a Stegosaurus looks like, so I can tell this is rubbish. But there are now more ridiculously wrong images than there are correct images, so it's taking me much longer to find good reference images. 

Actual Stegosaurus skeleto

And I don't only write about dinosaurs. I've been preparing the first bits of a book on machinery, and although I know broadly what the workings of the machines look like, I don't know in sufficient detail to be able to spot errors in an AI rendering. I've found a few that I know are wrong. But there are others I know could slip through. Now, I recognise some of the sites or picture agencies that are mostly or entirely using AI and I don't go near them. But it's cutting down the options. The AI generated slop is proliferating so quickly that I have to scroll through screens of it looking for something that might be correct. 

For textual material, I can go back to books. But some of the things I need images of aren't in any books that I know of. Even if the are it's much slower to find an image in a book and scan/photograph it and record it's provenance than to grab an image from a web page and its URL. The time consideration aside, though, if I can't provide reference images, the books won't happen. Some books will still happen, but a lot won't be possible. And how long will it be before people en masse begin to think that Spinosaurus had a skirt or Stegosaurus looked like the demon child of Edmontosaurus and T rex?

Anne Rooney

Out now (Jan 2025) from Arcturus, illustrated by Ro Ledesma: Weird and Wonderful Dinosaur Facts