ChatGPT launches AI-written e-books: Though he had dreamed about it, Brett Schickler had never before considered the possibility of becoming a published novelist. But, after finding out about the ChatGPT artificial intelligence initiative, Schickler believed he had been given a chance.
The prospect of authoring a book, according to Rochester, New York salesman Schickler, “finally appeared feasible.” I believed, “I can accomplish this.”
Schickler produced a 30-page illustrated children’s e-book in a couple of hours using the AI program, which can produce text blocks from straightforward instructions, and made it available for purchase through Amazon.com’s self-publishing division in January.
After finding a gold coin, Sammy the Squirrel—roughly animated using AI as well—learns from his forest buddies the importance of saving money. He creates an acorn-shaped piggy bank, makes investments in an acorn trading company, and dreams of one day purchasing an acorn mill.
According to the novel, Sammy becomes the richest squirrel in the forest, the envy of his buddies, and “the woodland started prospering.”
Schickler claims to have made less than $100 from “The Wise Little Squirrel: A Story of Saving and Investing,” which is available for $2.99 on Amazon’s Kindle store or $9.99 for a printed version. Even while it may not seem like much, it gave him the motivation he needed to use the software to write more novels.
According to Schickler, who utilised ChatGPT prompts like “create a tale about a dad teaching his son about financial literacy,” “I could see individuals creating a full career out of this.”
Schickler is at the forefront of a movement examining the potential and constraints of ChatGPT, which made its debut in November and has shocked Silicon Valley and beyond with its astounding capacity to produce coherent blocks of text quickly.
The Power of Homework, “How to Write and Generate Content With ChatGPT,” and the poetry collection “Echoes of the Universe” are just a few of the more than 200 e-books that name ChatGPT as an author or co-author on Amazon’s Kindle store as of mid-February. And it keeps growing every day. Books totally authored by ChatGPT on utilising ChatGPT have even become a new subgenre on Amazon.
Because many authors are unwilling to reveal their use of it, it is incredibly difficult to determine the exact number of e-books that AI might have produced due to the nature of ChatGPT.
The development of the software has already alarmed some of the largest names in the IT industry, leading Alphabet and Microsoft to rapidly introduce new AI-infused features in Google and Bing, respectively.
ChatGPT’s quick consumer adoption has sparked a frenzy of activity in the tech community as investors pour money into startups with an AI focus and have given technology companies a new purpose in the shadow of large layoffs. After showcasing an integration with ChatGPT, Microsoft, for example, garnered adoring attention this month for their otherwise dormant Bing search engine.
Yet, since ChatGPT learns to write by scanning millions of pages of previous material, there are already doubts about its veracity. Before CNET ceased its usage of AI, an AI experiment produced many corrections and what appeared to be plagiarism.
A THREATENED TO “REAL” AUTHORS?
When aspiring authors and self-help experts eager to make a quick buck turn to ChatGPT to help develop bot-made e-books and sell them through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing division, the staid book industry now appears ready to be upended. Such debut authors choose to write picture books for kids. There are hundreds of tutorials showing how to build a book in a few hours on YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit. Get-rich-quick scams, nutrition ideas, software coding assistance, and recipes are among the topics covered.
The Authors Guild executive director Mary Rasenberger remarked, “This is something we really need to be concerned about; these books will flood the market and a lot of authors will be out of job.” She noted that although human ghostwriting has a long history, automation made possible by artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to reduce book authorship to a commodity.
Or you’ll wind up with a lot of low-quality publications, she said. “She said authors and platforms should be transparent about how they make these books,” would be the active voice version of the given sentence.
In a YouTube video, an author who goes by the name Frank White demonstrates how he wrote the 119-page novella “Galactic Pimp: Vol. 1,” which is about alien groups battling over a human-staffed brothel in a distant galaxy, in less than a day. On Amazon’s Kindle e-book shop, you can get the book for just $1. In the video, White claims that anyone with the means and the time could use AI to produce 300 such books annually.
Because Amazon’s standards do not mandate it, many authors, like White, feel no obligation to mention in the Kindle shop that their great American work was written entirely by a computer.
When prompted by Reuters for comment, Amazon declined to say whether it intended to modify or evaluate its Kindle store policies on writers’ use of artificial intelligence or other automated writing techniques. According to Amazon spokeswoman Lindsay Hamilton via email, “all books in the shop must adhere to our content guidelines, including by complying with intellectual property rights and all other applicable laws.”
OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, declined to comment.
JUST HOURS FROM CONCEPT TO PUBLICATION
Amazon, which controls well over half of sales in the United States and, according to some estimates, more than 80% of the e-book industry, is by far the biggest seller of both physical and digital books. With the support of its Kindle Direct Publishing service, a cottage industry of independently published authors has emerged, carving out specific markets for those who enjoy erotica and self-help books.
In order to eliminate the difficulty and expense of finding literary agents or publishing houses, Amazon developed Kindle Direct Publishing in 2007 to enable anybody to sell and market a book from the comfort of their couch. In general, Amazon permits authors to rapidly publish through the system without any control, dividing any profits.
Among the AI-assisted authors drawn to this is Kamil Banc, who primarily earns income from selling perfumes online. Banc bet his wife that he could complete a book from conception to publication in less than a day. Banc released an illustrated 27-page book in December using ChatGPT, an AI picture maker, with questions like “create a bedtime story about a pink dolphin that teaches youngsters how to be honest.” He claimed it took him approximately four hours to write “Bedtime Stories: Brief and Sweet, For a Good Night’s Sleep,” which is now available on Amazon.
The bank reported that they have only sold a handful of copies so far, indicating that consumers have been showing sluggish attention. Nonetheless, readers gave it five stars, with one praising the “great and memorable characters.”
Since then, Banc has released two other AI-generated books, including an adult colouring book, and is now working on more. It’s actually very easy, he remarked. I was taken aback by how quickly it went from concept to publication.
The software does not wow everyone. In an email to Reuters, Mark Dawson, who is said to have sold millions of copies of books he self-penned, was quick to label ChatGPT-assisted writings “dull.”
The suggestion of books to other readers depends partly on their merit. A book will fall to the bottom rapidly if it receives negative reviews for having boring writing.