I found the cover image for this site, the same image as my kindle book ‘cover’, on the web. It was an un-copyrighted image, at least from the source at which I found it. I had hoped that by broadcasting, I could find the artist and give them credit for it, some day, if the book became noteworthy. That hope is running out.
I had considered what to do in this case. I have never plagiarized anything. If this loose image was stolen by the source that broadcasted it and which Google search picked up and broadcasted, I did the best I could to locate the artist, within reason. This image is so prominent that I did not intend to hide my use of it. It was simply so fitting of the content that it was the best thing to use.
The lawyer voice sometimes in my head said I should engineer an alternative work around. Besides the fractal generator I used for the cover of The Death Of Monsieur Bourbaki (which is entirely different tech from modern content generators, as it involves no theft of artists work, as modern generators do), I have never used a content generator at all, image, text, what have you (I have only seen others output of, even, ChatGPT and have never queried myself), but obviously, such generators are available.
Alternatively, I could have done an image on my own. Even ruling out the option of driving to Monticello, (which I would have gladly done, had I the budget), designing a cover in GIMP would not have been but a few hours (as with my cover of atheoryof.me and the filtering on my images for The Sevilla Trinity and The Alhambra Trinity, leading to the cover of my hard-copy book, The Spanish Trinity), but it would not have been justice to the artist that inspired the cover, and I was happy with their take. You might say it is just a picture of the Jefferson Memorial with green filtering. That is right. Still, it is theirs, however a lawyer may insist I instead legally maneuver, and I preferred a shot at a partnership.
Obviously intentions are a murky subject, and given my hope to protect artists not steal from them (ala ChatGPT), if the artist is not located in short order, the image will be taken down. On the other hand, I have made less than $50 on my book, while everyone in the Intelligence Community (MIIC) has read it for free. If you want to in turn blame me with legalities for not using a packaged theft for my cover image (an image generator that has no chance of being traced to the artist), that is the modern right of the rich and well positioned. The unnamed artist and I nevertheless deserve the credit.
Of further note. The Spanish translator of atheoryof.us is anonymous for her political protection.