Generative AI is currently morally bad, as most of it steals copyrighted works — but it would still be useful for people like me with no drawing skills. So I am increasingly using "AI without AI".

That is, I just post the prompt I would have used with a generative AI, and let the reader use his own wetware (aka "Brain") — the NI (Natural Imagination) — to visualize the picture.

As an example, in a reply to John Scalzi's post on Bluesky I described the book cover instead of generating it via AI:

And for some AI-without-AI, here is the prompt to generate the cover in your own wetware (aka "Brain"): «A book cover for the next Sci-Fi humoristic novel of the fictional author John Barefoot titled 'The Brother Laser Printer Aficionados'»

The nice thing about running prompts on your wetware is that the model is local, free, and the output stays in your head. No credits, no seed, no style references, infinite resolution, perfect privacy. It renders instantly — the only downside being that nobody else gets to see the result.

Also, it is something that has bothered me for a long time. As a boy, I was struck that during his famous 65-day survival drift across the Atlantic Ocean in 1952, narrated in his book Naufragé Volontaire, French physician and adventurer Alain Bombard — aboard his boat l'Hérétique — took only a few personal items, including a pocket score of Beethoven's string quartets (specifically the 15th String Quartet in A minor, Op. 132) alongside Bach's Passions. He recounted that studying and mentally playing this complex music helped keep him sane and motivated during extreme isolation and hardship.

I loved listening to Beethoven, but I could not fathom somebody actually "listening" by merely reading the score. It turns out he was doing AI-without-AI, ... decades before AI.