Over 200 e-books in Amazon's Kindle Store listed ChatGPT as an author as of mid-February 2023, as some worry that generative AI could commoditize book writing
Until recently, Brett Schickler never imagined he could be a published author, though he had dreamed about it.
Amazon's Kindle Store now carries a visible cohort of e-books that credit ChatGPT, making AI-assisted or AI-generated authorship legible to shoppers and other sellers on the marketplace.
Would-be authors such as Brett Schickler face a lower practical barrier to producing a publishable manuscript, while human writers face a new source of title-level competition.
Second-order effects
The authorship debate among journal editors and publishers gains a consumer-book counterpart: marketplaces, publishers, and readers must distinguish a credited AI tool from a human author when assessing a title.
As AI-generated titles multiply, competition for Kindle discovery and reader attention shifts toward curation, attribution, and differentiation rather than manuscript production alone.
Third-order effects
If AI-assisted publishing becomes routine, book markets may move from scarcity of written output toward scarcity of trusted provenance and effective distribution, increasing the strategic importance of platform rules and discovery systems.
The pattern points to a structural split between inexpensive generation and the higher-value work of editing, validation, and building reader trust.
The trend:Generative AI is commercializing content creation by lowering production barriers while making provenance and distribution the new constraints.
“'The idea of writing a book finally seemed possible,'” said Schickler, a salesman in Rochester, New York. “I thought ‘I can do this.’” YOU. DID. NOT. DO. ANYTHING. GEEEEET FUUUUUUCKED. https://www.reuters.com/...
Here is the article. Just the sheer number of people going to throw thousands of shitty AI books out there like spaghetti at a wall, further straining an already burned-out industry, is giving me a headache. https://www.reuters.com/...
I may or may not have Kindle Unlimited, but can say that ChatGPT books like “Galactic Pimp” will be indistinguishable from other offerings. (Gem from @GregBensinger) https://www.reuters.com/...
Hundreds of books co-authored by ChatGPT are already piling into Amazon's self-publishing arm - and that's just the authors that disclose it. Read @GregBensinger on how titles like “Galactic Pimp: Vol. 1” are being generated in less than a day - https://www.reuters.com/...
The ones that list ChatGPT as the author don't worry me. It's the authors who start using it without disclosure that'll be a problem. https://twitter.com/...
Come for the reporting about the boom of AI-written ebooks on Amazon, stay for the descriptions of some of the plots like “Galactic Pimp: Vol. 1” https://www.reuters.com/... by @GregBensinger
6. Our guidelines already state that we don't want “AI” written or assisted works. They don't care. A checkbox on a form won't stop them. They just lie.
Thread. Basically, AI-generated stories have clogged submissions to the point where they had to close them. And this seems to be a growing problem. https://twitter.com/...
Ironically this could, itself, be a sci-fi short story. Sci-fi short story publisher closes submissions due to overwhelming influx of ChatGPT/AI-generated stories: https://www.theguardian.com/ ...
“But I never turned up that day at the woodland glade. Because I am, in fact, a computer... ' The Guardian: Sci-fi publisher Clarkesworld halts pitches amid deluge of AI-generated stories https://www.theguardian.com/ ...
1. We aren't closing the magazine. Closing submissions means that we aren't considering stories from authors at this time. We will reopen, but have not set a date.
The solution of course is to also use AI to vet the submissions. So we will end up with machines writing literature for other machines. https://twitter.com/...
As someone who's trying to get published, this is a real concern. How do I prove I wrote my body of work if AI generated stuff is becoming so hard to identify to the point it can overwhelm and/or put publishers out of business? Thread: https://twitter.com/...
i'll keep saying it. AI is the information equivalent of a megafire or an atombomb. The production of quality information is the most fundamental part of a society. Ignight it into noise and nothing will hold. https://www.theguardian.com/ ...
This is weird; horrible + weird at the same time! And it makes me mad because the people at Clarkesworld are all thoroughly decent incredibly hard working folk... Sci-fi publisher deluged by AI-generated stories https://www.theguardian.com/ ...
3. Various third-party tools for identity confirmation are more expensive than magazines can afford and tend to have regional holes. Adopting them would be the same as banning entire countries.
Clarkesworld speculates that people are using AI to make ‘a quick buck’ since the sci-fi publication pays 12 cents a word for accepted stories. https://www.pcmag.com/...
I think Clarkesworld is just the first. We're going to see ChatGPT stories clogging up every magazine and publisher soon. It doesn't matter if “AI” writing programs ever get good. They can still ruin things while being bad. https://twitter.com/...