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ChatGPT as an author – Amazon fights against AI-generated books in the bestseller list
More and more AI-created books are being published on Amazon. There is no control.
© Lauren Hurley / Picture Alliance
With a program from Amazon, beginners can self-publish books. However, there are hardly any content-related control mechanisms. That’s why more and more AI-generated books are being published, some of which don’t make sense. This is a big problem for Amazon.
In addition to young authors who dream of publishing their own book, there is a new group that publishes their books on the platform of Amazon uploads: people who have books created by artificial intelligence and then sell them on the platform. Because with the spread of ChatGPT and Co., it has never been easier to write a book. All you have to do is enter a few keywords and the AI program will write an entire novel.
Ben Schickler published such a book. He told the Reuters news agency that he never thought he would ever be able to write a book. But then ChatGPT came along and offered him a whole new opportunity. With the help of artificial intelligence, Schickler was able to write a 30-page children’s book within a few hours in January 2023 and publish it on Amazon. With “The Wise Little Squirrel: A Tale of Saving and Investing” Ben Schickler becomes the official author on Amazon. Even though he didn’t write the book himself.
There was no success. The few reviews that have reached him are negative. The readers know that this book is a book created by artificial intelligence and make their anger clear. One user wrote in their 1-star review: “We are not just witnessing the death of art. This is the death of ALL human endeavors.”
The problem for Amazon: Supposed books that don’t make any sense
Books written with the help of AI aren’t Amazon’s biggest problem. Much worse are the books that are generated exclusively by artificial intelligence and published on Amazon. Because these are not only bad, but sometimes make no sense at all. Nonetheless, many of these books made it onto Amazon’s Young Adult Romance Best Seller list last week. Author Wesley Chu shared a screenshot with the list on Twitter, writing, “Amazon Self-Publishing is going through something…”
With titles that make no sense and unlovingly put together covers, it’s easy to see that these books weren’t written by a real person. Only 19 of the 100 titles on the bestseller list were written by real people. The rest was AI generated. One of these alleged bestsellers was “Fanatical Leader”. Extremetech magazine published an excerpt from the first page of the now defunct AI novel: “This brother-in-law is really too ambitious, this person is the master of the shadow demon palace, every cult master has an extremely terrible strength when not, then how can I sit in the position of head of the sect?”
Wesley Chu raises the question of how such books could have ended up on the bestseller list. After all, many people would have to read these books for them to be placed this high on the list. He therefore speculates that these must be bots that have consumed the books.
Two days later, the bestseller list was cleared again, but the problem has been there for a long time. According to the Reuters news agency, more than 200 e-books were already for sale on Amazon in mid-February 2023, in which ChatGPT was officially named as the author or co-author. According to Reuters, it can be assumed that the number of e-books in which the collaboration of the AI chatbot was not explicitly mentioned is far higher. A number of unreported cases that will continue to grow as AI technology increases.
Amazon spokeswoman Lindsay Hamilton told Reuters via email: “All books in the store must comply with our content policies, including compliance with intellectual property rights and all other applicable laws.” However, Amazon did not answer whether they plan to change their content guidelines to take action against the use of artificial intelligence.
Using AI to write books: A chance
Verena Macziejek has already published a book on Amazon herself. She entered the world of Amazon authors last month with her debut novel, Cursed Beasts and Wicked Souls. And while she didn’t use AI herself in the creation of her book, she doesn’t see its use as entirely bad. “It’s one thing we can’t stop,” she says star. “This is a technical revolution that will become indispensable in the future.” And even if she emphasizes that it is generally not right to let a machine write your book, she sees an opportunity to use artificial intelligence to support it. She adds as an example that authors nowadays also use programs to have their spelling and grammar corrected. If ChatGPT and Co. get better and better in the future, says Verena Macziejek, they can also be used to provide help and support in the development of a book.
Sources: Reuters, T3N, Extremetech