Amazon’s Kindle may have an ‘AI’ problem

Thinking how? Answer is self-publishing. Amazon Kindle has a Direct Program that allows many genuine authors to bring their work to the public without relying on a large publisher. The process is easy to sign up and with the advancement in technology, anyone can generate endless AI-written books and upload them to be sold on Amazon’s eBook store.

The TechRadar report quotes a tweet by an indie author, Caitlyn Lynch who stated that only 19 of the best sellers in the Teen & Young Adult Contemporary Romance eBooks top 100 chart on Amazon were real, legit books. The rest were nonsensical and incoherent, and seemingly AI-generated. 

A website called Motherload later looked into dozens of books on the platform and saw that AI books had been taken down from the best-seller lists. However, they were still up for purchase.

What is Amazon doing about it?

As per the report, Motherboard reached out to Amazon wherein the e-commerce company stated that it had “clear guidelines” for which books can be listed for sale. Amazon added that it would investigate when concerns are raised in order to protect both readers and authors.

“We invest heavily to provide a trustworthy shopping experience and to protect customers and authors from abuse,” said an Amazon spokesperson.

“We have clear content guidelines governing which books can be listed for sale and promptly investigate any book when a concern is raised. We invest heavily to provide a trustworthy shopping experience and to protect customers and authors from abuse,” he added.

AI-generated and assisted books have picked up after the launch of AI-based text-generator and image-generator tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney. Allegedly, AI generators work by scraping huge amounts of visual and text content from the internet – some of which the creators of this content never consented to. 

Updated: 05 Jul 2023, 12:00 PM IST