ON THE USE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN OUR ILLUSTRATIONS

The illustrations in Currawong Books Press titles are AI-assisted, art-directed and revised by the publisher across many iterations. We are open about this, and we think it matters to say so plainly.

For a single-handed, self-funded press in regional Tasmania, traditional illustration would mean either publishing nothing at all, or publishing only after years of saving. AI image generation, used carefully and with conviction, has opened a door for small presses like ours that would otherwise stay closed.

We are deeply respectful of professional illustrators — what they do is true art — and we hope they continue to make a living from their craft for as long as they wish to. We have no quarrel with them and no wish to replace them.

But the technology is here. It is not going away. Rather than pretend otherwise, or feel ashamed of using it, we have chosen to be open: every book published under this imprint carries an AI-assistance disclosure on the copyright page, and a detailed authorship memo is kept on file for each title, documenting the human direction behind every spread. The work is ours. The story is ours. The taste, the revisions, the decisions about what stays and what goes — all of these are ours. The tools, like the typesetter or the printing press before them, are simply the tools of the time.
