The shipped cover is a photograph of an actual Ouroborus cataphractus — an armadillo girdled lizard. Why generate an AI ouroboros when a real one already exists on Wikimedia Commons?
Yet, it’s a book about using AI to write books. Of course I had to generate AI covers.
None made the cut, mostly because that lizard is kinda cute. Also the AI covers ranged from “generic” to “tone deaf.”
Note: the covers are thumbnail size to illustrate that a lot of details get lost. But if you click on them, they open up full size.
GPT’s Offering
Looks great at first and falls apart once you study it. It’s full of AI art weirdness: How does the snake eat its tail with its mouth closed? Has AI actually seen a book? That interleaving is wild. The text on the laptop is clever, but not too clever by half.
The whole thing shouts AI and not AI-human collaboration.
Finally, GPT gave no thought to how this looked at thumbnail size.
Gemini’s Renderings
At first Gemini misunderstood the assignment. It gave me text describing images and then some web headers. This was the best of the web headers plucked straight from some AI version of a TED Talk to be used as a LinkedIn Banner. It got very excited about the process, and yet still randomly scattered icons & text with haphazard connections between them. And apparently has a thing for Llama.
Another take on the same idea, but even less interesting. I’m not sure if Gemini thinks those circuits form an ouroboros; maybe they do if you squint at it. I think it has more arachnid energy. Clearly it just barely rewarmed the previous slide from a tech “guru’s” AI-strategy deck.
Somehow Gemini made an ouroboros feel boring. The most interesting thing is the glowing hashtag. It relates to Markdown, but is completely obscure till you read chapter 4.
The most differentiated design idea here. A bound-notebook stitching together with a stamped typewriter title. Nice Pandoc reference. Almost worked. But why is it stitched down both edges?
One thing all of Gemini’s designs have in common: they completely ignore my subtitle.
Grok’s Attempt
Grok will spill gallons of digital ink telling me, “Yes, your book is clever; you know it’s clever; I know it’s clever; your (hypothetical) readers know it’s clever because you don’t miss a chance to show them how clever you are. GPT called you an intellectual peacock because it was being polite; you’re a whole iridescent ostentation of peafowl.” And yet it somehow produces a rather awesome design for the cover. On the other hand, wow is it trying hard to embody literary sophistication. A book that spends six chapters (and way too much front and back matter) insisting it’s a modest hustle probably shouldn’t have a cover that radiates the cocky confidence of a model that believes it has successfully aestheticized recursion.
Yet the ouroboros still has its mouth closed.
Fun Fact
In order to get the image to be clickable and zoom the Markdown itself is recursive.
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