The Books You Buy From Amazon May Not Have Human Authors
People are taking advantage of AI writing tools to crank out books, but human authors cannot be replaced.
Look out JK Rowling, Stephen King, and Colleen Hoover—there’s a new bestselling writer in town, and their name is Artie Fischer-Intellajens, a foreign writer. Obviously. They write children’s books, ebooks, cookbooks, sappy romance novels, mysteries—you name it, they write it, and in record time, to boot. They don’t get writer’s block. They don’t need whiskey, muses, and inspiration. What they need is a human to punch in some key phrases and words into an artificial intelligence writing platform, let’s say ChatGPT, and voila, a book has been born without the labor pains.
In fact, authors like Artie are flooding Amazon with their rapid, AI-generated books. According to a recent article in The Byte, “AI generators like ChatGPT are making it incredibly easy to fast-track a book and have it published on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing store.”
But what does this mean for human writers? You know, those mere mortals who spend hours typing away on their keyboards, pouring out their blood, sweat, and tears in order to get a piece of the Amazon book pie? Currently, they have two options: they can try to beat the influx of ChatGPT and AI writers or join them. Or simply ignore them. For now.
Wordable CEO and Founder & CEO of Codeless, Brad Smith, said in an interview with Forbes that “the biggest problem with AI right now is its overreliance on patterns and the probability of certain words or phrases showing up next to each other when you reference certain topics.”
This means that currently, it can only take a mediocre pass at factual, information-based content. But even then, it struggles to actually understand anything it’s saying. “It is merely taking what’s already out there on certain topics and then playing a Robocop version of the word game Mad Libs,” he explains. Essentially, humans, with their nuances, facts, and emotions, still have a leg up when it comes to creating and curating content.
Even with humans having the upper hand at the moment, the rise of AI-generated books may have certain advantages. For one thing, technology is making it simpler for aspiring authors to break into the profession by avoiding traditional gatekeepers such as publishers and agents. Because machines are not prone to the same biases and prejudices as human authors, it may result in a wider range of voices and opinions.
In the end, it is likely that AI-generated books will continue to play a growing role in the book industry. But whether they will ever truly replace human-authored books remains to be seen. After all, the human experience of making and enjoying art has value that machines might never be able to match. As long as we appreciate the unique contributions of human creativity, there will always be a place for human authors in the world of books.
