Parts of this is similar/repeated from my "Of Courts and Kingdoms" disclaimer as well.
Hiya! So I wanted to make this page to just give a Disclaimer/Heads Up regarding my usage of AI. This is so if you have possible issues regarding the process of creating Legacy, you can just head out now. No hard feelings.
Edit/Update as of 07/06/2026: I'm going to re-work this page as my process has changed/developed. Generally what is listed here is accurate other than I've moved away from using ChatGPT fully. Generally, I use Claude now for written aspects (brainstorming, first draft plotting, website coding, etc) and Gemini's Banana Pro for image generation (along with NovelAI still). I'll be keeping the below information when I update this for transparency. Additionally, the section about tagging will need to be updated, as now that I have the gallery a bit more functional, I can more accurately explain how I'll be tagging images.
Edit/Update as of 07/10/2026: This page is going to have an overhaul. The sections about how I've used AI in previously and updating to include my current process will be moved to my AI process page. I'll be keeping the sections "Disclaimers/Heads Up: Usage of AI in writing, plot, image creations, and misc others", "Real brief, negatives of AI and my personal views:", and will add a section towards the top with a brief list of where AI was used and the REAL rating for the project. I hope this will make it so people can determine if this project is for them or not at a glance while also giving an option for more in-depth explanation of my personal process. Until the my AI process page is set up, I'll be keeping this page as is.
Disclaimers/Heads Up: Usage of AI in writing, plot, image creations, and misc others
I want to start with stating that AI "art", to me, does not exist. AI "creations" exist. Art requires some sort of creative intent behind it and, at least at the moment, machines can not have creative intent. A machine can create almost anything if it's designed and build to do so. Only humans (and I guess animals but that's a whole other debate) can create art. People who generate AI images are not artists, especially not with the history of the ethics behind past and current AI image generation. If we get the point of AI genuinely having creative intent behind the output it produces, then we’ve got a whole other can of worms to deal with.
That being said, I’m going to be upfront and say I have used AI (as a tool) during the process of creating "Legacy" and likely will continue to use AI. If you’re bothered by this and/or do not want to consume a project that has any level of AI, I hope you have a lovely day and I’ll see you later! I mean that genuinely, though I know that might not come across in text.
If you’re still around, I’m assuming you’re curious about how I’ve used AI in the project. I’ll give a rundown of everything/every way AI was used. I want to be transparent and upfront with this because I know how today’s internet tends to be. I want the peace of mind of knowing I didn’t unintentionally trick anyone into consuming something they didn’t know the origins of.
Small note: even if an AI image generator calls itself an "art generator", I will always try to refer to it as an "image generator". If I ever refer to an image generator as an “art generator”, please 1) know that I do not mean it makes art and 2) let me know so I can edit it.
First, how I used AI image creation in the process of Legacy.
I'm going to try to do what I did for OCaK's disclaimer and go in chronological order. Similar to OCaK, I first started using image generators to create visuals of character appearances. A bit ironic but I’ve struggled with describing character appearances if I don’t have a visual. I’ll have an idea of certain aspects, such as eye color or skin color or hair type, but there’s a wide range any of those could fall under. When I say a character has curly hair, what type of curly hair am I trying to describe? When I say a character has blue eyes, do I want to describe them as more of a striking blue or a more muted blue? I personally don’t know until I have a visual for myself.
I’ve tried things like Picrew or other character creation games but the available options were always a bit more limited than I like and I was never able to fully “get” what I was imagining in my head. So eventually I started using NovelAI’s image generator to make the first drafts of the characters. I’d often recreate them with each update to NovelAI’s image generator there but eventually got the first versions of a lot of my characters.
The next thing I ran into was the fact that sites such as Campfire, where I was kinda planning on putting characters and other information, doesn’t allow for AI generated images (understandably!). About this time, I had gotten the process down for OCaK and started to use the same for Legacy.
That led to the process I’ve been using. I had put the full body referenced I had created for OCaK characters that were AI assisted (created in NovelAI > Inserted into ChatGPT along with my own non-AI art to recreate the NovelAI image in my style > Inserted into Clip Studio and recreated/re-traced) and gotten a simple prompt to use in the future:
Create a full-body character illustration in a clean cel cartoon/anime style.
Line art: thick black outer contour, slightly thinner interior lines, crisp vector-like edges.
Coloring: flat base colors with one cel-shade tone and minimal highlights; no gradients or texture.
Output: transparent-background PNG, 1024×2048.
Avoid: painterly rendering, gradients, grain/noise, photoreal skin, sketch lines.
Now, I create the image in NovelAI, put that NovelAI image into ChatGPT with the above prompt and generate until I get something I like. I then recreated/redrew the image in Clip Studio. Some elements of the AI image were re-traced, fixing and altering aspects along the way, as well as adding my own art. I refer to this art/images as “AI Redrawn” or “AI Referenced/Assisted” since while I redrew the image myself, AI was the base image.
For any future image that I mark as “AIRedrawnArt” (I’ll describe the tags a bit further), assume I’ve used this process of generating an AI image, likely either with ChatGPT or with NovelAI, then put that image into Clip Studio and redrew/traced/recreated the image from there.
Now similar to OCaK, I also used ChatGPT to create placeholder covers for Legacy. And similar to OCaK, I wasn't fully happy with the AI generated covers. I created Canva covers that I was fairly happy with but as I developed further, I liked the idea of my stories having similar "themes"/"elements" to the book covers. So, I used ChatGPT to create what would be the center icons for each story. I took a few of the generated images I liked, put them into Procreate and kinda photobashed the different parts of the images to create the center icons I use now.
As of writing this first version of the disclaimer, I've used AI to generate ideas of clothing and other concept images for Legacy. However, I haven't really done anything further with it since it hasn't really been a "need" for me. Unlike OCaK, there's not a lot of development that requires clothing or concept images.
Tags and Watermarking: I know how it can get tiring on the internet trying to detect if something is AI or not, especially when it comes to images. I don’t want people to stress too much here so I’ll be using a bit of a system to be as clear as possible.
When possible, I’ll use tags to clearly define images and art. For reference, here are the tags that will be used and their level of AI involvement:
- #AIGeneratedImage - The image is fully AI generated. There’s been no human alterations made to the image. I’ll also use #ChatGPT and/or #NovelAI alongside this tag to indicate which generator I used.
- #AIRedrawnArt - This is for images such as the headshots and full body references I’ll be making for my characters. For images/art here, there was an originally AI generated image I then redrew either in Procreate or Clip Studio. The full image will be redrawn by me without the original AI image attached.
- #OriginalArt - This is for my art with absolutely no AI involvement As well as not using any purchased art bases (since I want that to be a separate tag). This means no referencing AI or generating images.
- #BaseArt - This is for images where I used purchased bases/lineart. Credits to original base/lineart owner will be provided. No AI will be used in these arts/images.
- #CopyrightFreeImage - This is for images used that are free to use and/or have a creative license that allows usage without credit. These are primarily from sites such as Usplash.
Additionally, in an effort to avoid people taking any AI generated images from this blog, I’ll be placing watermark on AI images that simply says “AI Generated Image”. This is not in an effort to prevent people from “stealing” any AI images from this blog since 1) I legally have no copyright of the AI generated image and 2) I’ll never claim ownership of the image itself. This is an effort to prevent someone taking that image and attempting to pass it as their own “art” and/or profit from it.
Next, onto how I used AI in the plot, outlining, and worldbuilding of Legacy.
Again, I’m going to try to do this in chronological order, similar as before. Legacy, like OCaK, originally started with a few non-related AI chats using Claude within SillyTavern and character cards. It, as stated on the home page, started as a Harry Potter AU chat/RP. I believe what would become "Nexus" was the first one but "Echoes" eventually grew to be the more "primary" story I was focused on.
When I decided to make Legacy into it's own original work, the character cards didn't fit. At this point, I recreated them to fit with the world I was creating instead. These new Legacy cards and their chats/RPs would help me develop the overarching story, plot points, and allowed me to bounce ideas around (and able to find out what I did and didn’t like for my stories). These AI character cards and chats are what I’d personally consider the very first rough rough rough drafts of their respective stories. Due to the heavy usage of AI in these, I don’t plan to post these anywhere.
Once I got a start to what I think I’d like each story to be, my usage of AI for the outlining and writing process dropped off greatly. For the outline of all the stories, no AI was used beyond me going to the AI chats/RPs to look through plot points I enjoyed/wanted to include. I use Obsidian for the development of Legacy (it’s even what I typed this disclaimer up in first) and I used the canvas feature in Obsidian to outline my stories. (Same process as OCaK.)
When I get to the first drafts of the stories using the outline, I will not use AI generated text for the vast majority (95% of the written text is original) of the draft. I will never use any AI to write full scenes and put those into this first post-outline draft. The 5% AI I gave is that I do plan on using Grammarly and/or ProWritingAid during my writing process and may or may not use the suggestions either program comes up with. Both Grammarly and ProWritingAid use trained AI models so "technically" their rephrasing/rewriting suggestions could be considered AI generated. Just to be "safe", that's why I put the drafts and published stories may contain up to 5% AI generated text.
Next, I did use AI to develop some worldbuilding aspects of Legacy but in a bit of a different way compared to how I used it in OCaK. Since this is an Modern Day Urban Fantasy story, there wasn't as much "in depth" worldbuilding to be done in regards to specifically multiple cultures and countries. Instead, I used AI in a bit more a logistical tool. The biggest part (as of writing this) was that I used ChatGPT to determine the magical population in the Legacy world.
Short run down: I wanted the magical population of Legacy to be big enough so that cities (while hidden and few) was believable. However, I also wanted the population to be small enough that it could be believable that they are (largely) hidden/unknown. I want to say originally my thought was maybe 1% of the global population. However, upon running what that would look like through ChatGPT, I found that number to be too high. Eventually, I ended up with roughly 0.5% of the global population being magical. I also had ChatGPT break down what the regions of the world and the most populous countries would have for a magical population as well. I did double check the numbers since I wanted to make sure there wasn't any hallucinations.
That's the main way I use AI for worldbuilding. I also used AI to generally check if an idea is plausible and/or realistic. I did my best to double check information the AI provided, as I’m well aware of the hallucinations it can have.
TLDR: I use AI generated text to form overarching plot points/plot of books, very VERY rough drafting, grammar/spell check, and starting points for ideas. No AI generated "clumps" (I.E. paragraphs of text) of any type will be used publicly and everything will be re-worked with my own writing.
"Special" Note/Disclaimer: Campfire
As of writing this, I do plan to host content on Campfire Writing eventually, as well here and on AO3 (writing only). Campfire does not allow any AI generated images or text to be published to their platform and I 100% intend to stay within these guidelines. However, I did clarify with Campfire support a few aspects of their guidelines. Campfire support clarified to me that programs such as Grammarly and ProWritingAid are not considered AI and are not included in this policy. I will still say that since Grammarly and/or ProWritingAid technically still use AI, I will still disclaim my writing may contain upwards of 5% AI generated assistance/writing. They also clarified that my process of redrawing/tracing an AI image in Clip Studio would result in the final non-AI image to be allowed as part of a published work.
Side Note: thanks Campfire support for dealing with all of my specific questions about AI usage on your platform! The person who was answering my questions was a patient saint and explained the policies wonderfully.
Real brief, negatives of AI and my personal views:
This is the same section as on OCaK so if you've read that one, this is the same.
With how I use AI out of the way, I want to talk briefly about the general negatives of AI. From being online, I think they can be boiled down to the below:
- Environmental Impact
- Companies, especially large corporations, using AI to replace humans and jobs
- AI being used commercially and not being disclosed
- AI models being trained on copyrighted materials
I'm going to try to keep this short as I'd likely go on a far too long of a spiel if I don't.
1) Environmental Impact. This is, personally, the negative I struggle with the most. Yes, AI has an environmental impact. However, there's a conversation to be had about the difference in an individual using AI vs the broader impact of AI infrastructure. Me, as an individual using AI, has an extremely small impact to the environment. One that's probably not even able to be detected. As for the broader impact of the AI infrastructure? Reality is, I'm not in any position to change that. AI companies are, you know, companies. Large companies (which I'd argue the popular AI models are) don't care about their environmental impact. They don't care until they're legally forced to care. I do think AI companies, as all companies who have substantial impact to the environment, should be held more accountable for their impact in ways that actually force them to change. Me using or not using AI isn't going to change that. Maybe that's a selfish opinion but that's frankly how I see it. Small addition: Andy Masley has written a few essays that sums up my feelings about this topic pretty well with sources.
- "# Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment - a cheat sheet" https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversations-about
- "What's the full "hidden" climate cost of a ChatGPT prompt?" https://andymasley.substack.com/p/whats-the-full-hidden-climate-cost
- And to cover the idea of "Well if everyone stopped using AI, that would add up!", he's posted an essay about similar relating to climate change "For the climate, little things don't add up" https://andymasley.substack.com/p/for-the-climate-little-things-dont You might agree or disagree with these views but this pretty much sums up how I feel.
2) Companies using AI to replace humans, especially in the creative field. This is where I heavily lean towards being Anti-AI in this topic. To me, once you're a corporation that profits millions to billions of USD a year, you don't really have an excuse to use AI over a human. A company using AI over a human very much does make me view the company as taking the "cheaper" route, especially when they can afford to pay a human for a better product. It's also pretty shady to not disclose when AI was used. People deserve to know how the product they are consuming was created. This also leads to:
3) AI being used commercially, especially without disclosure. Personally, anything that is majority AI created should not be used to directly profit from. It's that reason I'll never use any of the character images I've made from tracing over an AI generated image as say pins, stickers, or just paid digital prints because the base of the image is AI generated, regardless of the process afterwards. I don't feel right directly profiting from that. It's the same reason I don't think people should be selling AI generated images, ESPECIALLY if they try to pass that image off as their own art. I guess there could be a conversation about if it's disclosed from the start if the product is AI generated and people can decide if it's worth their money or not but the issue there is that people would need to start being upfront with if a product is AI generated, not to mention the murkiness of copyright. Which also leads to the final point:
4) AI models are constantly being trained using copyrighted materials. Yeah no, not okay. People should have knowing and willing knowledge and consent to how their creative works can or would be used. I think even if AI models are now trained on only non-copyrighted materials, the well has already been poisoned with that and it's not really something you can fix by dumping clean water into it (if that makes any sense). That's the major reason I don't think anyone should be directly profiting from AI generation. "Fruit of the poisonous tree" and all that.
Additionally! Any and all bases/lineart I own/use, art I've commissioned, and just any image/art that isn't AI or by me will never be put into any AI generator. ONLY images I've created on my own, recreated from AI, or are AI will be considered for prompting.
Small note: I've said "directly profit" a few times so I want to clarify what I mean by that. An example is the chibis I have for my Main/Primary characters of OCaK. I used AI to generate the base image then retraced/redrew over that image in Clip Studio. These chibis are used in character profiles that do not require any financial cost to view but a person seeing one of these chibis might be drawn to look further into OCaK and might read one of my stories (if I ever put a version of them for commercial profit). Here, I would indirectly profit from the usage of the chibis. Now, say I used the chibis are put them onto pins or stickers and then started selling those. Now, I’d be directly profiting from the chibi images themselves, which have AI as the base/starting point. THAT is what I’m personally against.
Also, one last note on me generating AI images then tracing over that image, yes, I am aware this is not going to make me better at drawing or art in general. I’ll be honest, I’m not exactly looking on improving or getting better at my artistic skills. I just wanted to get the image(s) I had/have in my head out in the real world and using the process from before, I was able to in a way that I’m happy with. And since I’m not making a profit nor would I have commissioned someone if AI didn’t exist, I’ll be honest, I don’t really see the major harm.
AI is being used as a TOOL here. Anything I used AI for (at that moment), I would not have chosen to use a human if AI didn’t exist so no job or financial loss was caused due to my personal AI Usage. Now, I’m going to be honest, I’m not really interested in having a debate about AI. That isn’t what this blog or overall creative project is about. It’s not to flaunt or show “LOOK AT HOW GREAT AI IS”, it, again, is being used as a tool. That’s it. The ONLY reason I will mark anything as AI is to be fully transparent with people and so then people don’t have to question what I post is AI or if it’s my own creative work. I do recognize that by being upfront, people might not believe me when I do say something is my own creative work. That’s fine. I’d rather do this and be upfront so that people have everything they need from me to make their choices informed ones rather than to hide it and personally know I’m not being honest with people.
With all this being said, I’ll likely not engage in any discussion about AI. If anyone does comment about AI, I do request things remain civil. I very much see why people severely dislike AI and I can very much see why people greatly enjoy AI. It’s one of the topics where, personally, both views are valid in their opinions.
Finally: AI Usage in the creation of this website:
If you've seen my OCaK site, you probably noticed that this site is basically just a reskin of that one. Because, in truth, it is. So the below portion is explaining how I created the OCaK site and how AI was used there in case you want/need to know:
I did use ChatGPT to assist me with parts of this website. I have created I think 2 websites before, one was for my final in a web development class in college and the other was a personal website. I remember for certain the website for college was 100% not AI, as it was before ChatGPT was released. The personal website I think was assisted by AI in parts, mainly to figure out why the HTML and CSS weren't doing what I was expecting.
I originally was going to use the personal site was the template for this site but then I came across a few sites on here that had used petrapixel's layout generator. Immediately ditched that idea and turned to that generator for the template of this site. From there, I used AI in a moderate degree to develop the rest of this site. AI was a great TOOL: helping me with JS, figuring out why the f* my header would disappear (love forgetting that header.js and Header.js will path differently, it's my favorite thing ever /s), helping me figure out the best font colors when I diverted from anything other than black and white, etc. However, I don't think I would have been able to create this site the way it is without my previous knowledge of how to make a website completely without AI. I can look at my HTMLs, CSSs, and JSs files and (mostly, other than JS still getting re-introduced there) understand what's going on. I feel like I could have gotten to this point without AI, especially since I've done it before. However, I don't think I would have been able to in as quick of a timeframe.
Edit/Update as of 07/06/2026: I've moved pretty much fully away from ChatGPT but I still use Claude now for a decent amount of site development.