AI: Are you ready for Ebooks Written by the Borg Queen? by L. A. Kelley

photo by cottonbro studio

Recently, I did a blog on AI narrated audiobooks, but that’s not the only place AI is showing up. ChatGPT is one of the big producers where content is created by AI. What kind of content? Any old thing you can think of; essays, blogs, book blurbs, fiction. In February of this year, ChatGPT announced over 200 self-published ebooks in Amazon with ChatGPT as, at least, one of the authors. It’s suspected countless others were published under a human’s name. How did Amazon react to the news? It didn’t. Unless it’s self-reported, Amazon has no method to detect if a book is written by an AI. Nor does Amazon have any rules in place to prevent or encourage AI publications. In effect, it closes its algorithmic eyes and hopes the problem resolves itself. Unfortunately, the more accomplished AI becomes, the more difficult it will be to detect their content or enforce any rules, if and when they become available. To put it simply. Nobody knows if this will be a problem and nobody is willing to do anything about it or even be sure that they should.

Another issue is only a small number of companies have the smarts to deal with the exponential increase in processing power. Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Microsoft, among a few others exercise near-total control of AI technology. It’s an exclusive club that few understand. Even those who write the code, have admitted they don’t have a perfect understanding of certain AI functions. Who will write the rules to protect the rest of us? What happens if AI’s goals don’t align with our own? If you don’t have a clue, watch or read more science fiction. It never ends well.

It isn’t just wild-eyes authors like myself expressing concern. Important people in the field are jumping on the bandwagon. Until recently, Dr. Geoffrey Hinton was the AI expert at Google. He quit his job to speak freely about his concerns, specifically AI can already disperse misinformation. When the internet is flooded with false photos, videos, and text how will anyone be able to detect the truth anymore? There is also the fear of AI’s effect on the job market. Better AI interface means it can eventually replace paralegals, personal assistants, and translators among others. As Dr. Hinton says, “I don’t think they should scale this up more until they have understood whether they can control it.” The more sophisticated AI-authors become, the more difficult it also becomes to pinpoint content written by programs like ChatGPT – which ultimately means that any limitations set by Amazon might already be unenforceable.

Will AI take over the self-publishing biz? Should authors be worried?

Maybe yes. Maybe no.

First, you need to understand how AI content is created. Information must be given to a system such as ChatGPT. For instance, say you needed a book blurb. One way to start is by feeding ChatGPT a synopsis. Then the AI grabs content from the internet finding examples and scouring similarities. The more detail in the synopsis, the more accurate and understandable the blurb will be. The problem is there is no way to know where it pulled its data. The internet is open and ChatGPT can “create” a synopsis using language from another similar one. It can even “create” a book by pulling content from anywhere. It doesn’t look for permission. It doesn’t accredit. The worst case scenario is a chunk of content taken from other works and there’s no way to know. The idea of my book plots stolen by others doesn’t give me the warm and fuzzies.

It's a scary thought, but we’re not there yet.

Very few AI books are on the marketplace and they aren’t well-written. AI’s can’t feel human emotions and their writing is flat and not emotionally engaging. However, every author knows, the bottom line for success is the almighty dollar. For an AI book to pose a real threat to authors, they have to be marketed to become a best-seller. No artificial intelligence tool can do that (at least not yet.) However, it’s a sad fact the marketplace only cares about success. If even one AI-written ebook makes the best-seller lists, it’s down the toilet for the rest of us, and all hail the Borg Queen.

L. A. Kelley writes science fiction and fantasy with humor, romance, and a touch of sass. Her intelligence is not artificial.