How this book was made

the process · what was refused · what counts as proof

The pictures in The Island were made with an artificial intelligence program. The book says so in three places: on the credits page, on its sales pages, and in a twenty-seven-page workshop notebook that shows what the program produced and what was set aside. This page gives the essentials, so that it can be read before buying, not after.

Where it started

This book was first made for one reader, in ten copies made by hand. Nobody hires an illustrator for ten copies. The program was the tool at hand, and it was used as a tool: every picture was conceived, described, corrected and redone, hundreds of times, over weeks. Twenty-three were kept for the tale. It was when the book stopped being a gift and became a public object that the question arose: what is it worth? The book does not settle it. The notebook asks it, with the pictures that were set aside and the reason for each, and lets the reader decide.

The text

The tale, two thousand words, was written by the author, without any program. The questions (“Read it three times”) and the making-of notebook were drafted with the help of an AI assistant, from the author’s notes, decisions and pictures, in his voice; he reread, corrected and settled them line by line. The English edition was translated by the author with AI translation tools, then copy-edited by a professional editor, named in the colophon. A detector (Pangram, 27 September 2026) reads the French tale as human-written and finds the machine where it was used: in the apparatus and in the translation. Both reports are available on request.

The pictures

Conceived and directed by the author, made with an artificial intelligence program, one at a time, from written descriptions. The program produced hundreds of pictures; twenty-three are in the tale, twenty-seven in the notebook, including those set aside, with the reason. Every picture carries a text description for screen readers. The cover follows the same method.

The rule

Say what the machine did, and show what it was refused. Not a footnote: a page, with examples, that the reader can judge. This page is one; the notebook is another. Some readers hold that a picture made with a machine is worth nothing; they have the right to close the book here, and that is why this page exists before the purchase.

What counts as proof

• Ten copies made by handA numbered, handmade edition, given in August 2026, deposited with Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec and Library and Archives Canada in September 2026 (ISBN 978-2-9825568-0-5).
• The copy editing of the English editionDone by a professional editor, with tracked changes in the working file, in September 2026; the editor is named in the colophon.
• The declarations to the storesAt Amazon, Google Play and Draft2Digital, the book is declared as it is: pictures made with AI; the tale written without AI; questions and notebook drafted with the help of AI; English translation made with AI tools and edited by a human. Declarations of 23 September 2026, corrected on 29 September.
• The filesThe EPUB and PDF editions carry their production metadata and their picture descriptions; successive versions are kept and dated.
• The colophonIn the book, on the credits page: what was done, by whom, with what.

If a reader, a teacher or a journalist wants to see any of these, it is enough to write.

Page published on 2 October 2026.