SAN FRANCISCO: Until recently, Brett Sheckler never imagined he could become a published author, even though he dreamed of it. But after learning about the ChatGPT artificial intelligence program, Schickler realized an opportunity had landed in his lap.
Schickler, a salesman in Rochester, New York, said the idea of writing a book finally seemed feasible. “I thought ‘I can do this.'”
Using AI software that can generate blocks of text with simple gestures, Schickler produced a 30-page children’s e-book in a few hours, which was sold in January through Amazon.com’s self-publishing unit. presented for
In the edition, Sammy the Squirrel, rendered brutally using AI, learns from his forest friends about saving money after being on a gold coin. He builds an acorn-shaped piggy bank, invests in an acorn trading business and hopes to one day buy an acorn grinding stone.
According to the book, Sammy became the richest squirrel in the forest, the envy of her friends and “the forest began to flourish”.
“The Wise Little Squirrel: A Tale of Saving and Investing,” available in the Amazon Kindle store for $2.99 — or $9.99 for the printed version — set Schickler back less than $100, he said. While that may not sound like much, it’s enough to inspire him to write other books using the software.
“I could see people making a career out of it,” said Sheckler, who used prompts on ChatGPT such as “Write a story about a father teaching his son about financial literacy. “
Schickler is at the leading edge of a movement testing the promise and limits of ChatGPT, which began in November and immediately shocked Silicon Valley and beyond with its extraordinary ability to generate cogent blocks of text instantly. Sent waves.
Amazon’s Kindle Store listed ChatGPT as an author or co-author on more than 200 e-books in mid-February, including “How to Write and Create Content Using ChatGPT,” “The Power of Homework” and Poetry. Collection includes “Echoes of”. Universe.” And the number is growing every day. There’s even a new subgenre on Amazon: books about using ChatGPT, written entirely by ChatGPT.
But due to the nature of ChatGPT and the failure of many authors to disclose that they’ve used it, it’s nearly impossible to get a full accounting of how many e-books could be written by AI.
The emergence of the software has already rattled some of the biggest tech firms, prompting Alphabet and Microsoft to launch new functions at Google and Bing, respectively, that incorporate AI.
ChatGPT’s rapid adoption by consumers has fueled a flurry of activity in tech circles as investors poured money into AI-focused startups and given new purpose to technology firms amid widespread holiday gloom. . Microsoft, for one, got a lot of coverage for its BingBing search engine this month after showing off its integration with ChatGPT.
But there are already concerns over authenticity, as ChatGPT learns to write by scanning millions of pages of existing text. An experiment with AI by CNET led to numerous fixes and apparent plagiarism before the tech news site suspended its use.
Threat to ‘real’ authors?
Now ChatGPT looks poised to upend the steady-book industry as novelists and self-help gurus looking to make a quick buck are turning to the software to create bot-powered e-books and sell them on Amazon. Get help publishing through the Kindle Direct Publishing arm. Children’s picture books are a favorite for first-time authors.
Hundreds of tutorials have popped up on YouTube, TikTok and Reddit, showing how to make a book in just a few hours. Articles include get-rich-quick schemes, diet tips, software coding tips and tricks.
“This is something we really need to be concerned about, these books will flood the market and put a lot of writers out of work,” said Mary Rosenberger, executive director of the writers’ group Writers Guild. said Ghostwriting — by humans — has a long tradition, he said, but the potential for automation through AI could transform book writing from a craft into a commodity.
There needs to be transparency from authors and platforms about how these books are created or you’ll end up with a lot of low-quality books, he said.
One author, who goes by the name Frank White, showed in a YouTube video how he wrote “Galactic Pimp: Vol. 1,” about alien factions in a galaxy far, far away that destroy humans, in less than a day. Fighting over a room full of The book is available for just $1 on Amazon’s Kindle e-book store. In the video, White says that anyone with the energy and time can create 300 such books a year, all using AI.
Many authors, like White, feel no obligation to disclose in the Kindle Store that their Great American Novel was wholesaled through a computer, in part because Amazon’s policies don’t require it.
When asked for comment by JEE News, Amazon did not address whether it had changed or revised its Kindle store policies regarding authors’ use of AI or other automated writing tools. Planned. “All books in the store must follow our content guidelines, including compliance with intellectual property rights and all other applicable laws,” Amazon spokeswoman Lindsey Hamilton said via email.
A spokesperson for ChatGPT developer OpenAI declined to comment.
From conception to publication in just hours
Amazon is by far the largest seller of both physical and e-books, accounting for more than half of all sales in the United States and, by some estimates, more than 80% of the e-book market. Its Kindle Direct publishing service has spawned a cottage industry of self-published novelists, creating niches for lovers of erotic content and self-help books.
Amazon created Kindle Direct Publishing in 2007 to allow anyone to sell and market a book from their couch without the hassle or expense of finding literary agents or publishing houses. In general, Amazon allows authors to publish immediately through unsupervised units, distributing whatever they produce.
It attracted new AI-assisted authors like Kimmel Bank, whose primary business is selling fragrances online, who bet his wife to take a book from concept to publication in less than a day. can. Using ChatGPT, an AI image generator and prompts such as “Write a bedtime story about a pink dolphin that teaches kids how to be honest,” Banks wrote in a 27-page paper in December. Published the book. “Bedtime Stories: Short and Sweet, for a Good Night’s Sleep,” available on Amazon, took Bank about four hours to create, he said.
Customer interest has been acknowledged so far: the bank said sales totaled about a dozen copies. But readers gave it five stars, including one that praised its “surprising and memorable characters”.
The bank has since published two more AI-powered books, including an adult coloring book, with more in the works. “It’s actually very simple,” he said. “I was surprised how quickly it went from concept to publication.”
Not everyone is blown away by software. Mark Dawson, who has reportedly sold millions of copies of his self-authored books through Kindle Direct Publishing, was quick to call ChatGPT-assisted novels “bad” in an email to JEE News.
“Merit plays a role in how books are recommended to other readers. If a book gets bad reviews because the writing is dull, it quickly sinks to the bottom.”
