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- A buzzy new author has become a familiar presence in Amazon's bookstore — OpenAI's ChatGPT.
- The chatbot is credited as an author or coauthor for more than 200 paperbacks and e-books.
- One expert told Reuters they were worried the trend could flood the market with low-quality books.
ChatGPT appears to have become a prolific author.
At the time of writing, the buzzy chatbot developed by OpenAI was credited as the author or coauthor on more than 200 paperbacks and e-books in Amazon's bookstore. The number was first reported by Reuters.
The real number of books authored by the chatbot could be much higher as Amazon policies do not require users to disclose the use of AI, per Reuters.
Several books are guides to using the chatbot. One paperback where the bot is listed as a coauthor, "ChatGPT on ChatGPT: The AI Explains Itself," was described as having been "written entirely" by the AI bot. The Kindle version of the book is free but a paperback costs $11.99.
Another popular genre is children's books written by ChatGPT and illustrated by other AI programs. Ammaar Reshi, a product-design manager at a financial-tech company based in San Francisco, told Insider he wrote and illustrated a children's book in 72 hours using ChatGPT and Midjourney.
Reshi self-published "Alice and Sparkle" as a paperback on Amazon's bookstore for free via a service called KDP. The book went viral on Twitter after it was met with intense backlash from creatives. Some were upset about how AI image generators use their work, while others took issue with the quality of the writing.
Mary Rasenberger, executive director of writers' group the Authors Guild, told Reuters: "This is something we really need to be worried about, these books will flood the market and a lot of authors are going to be out of work."
Rasenberger told the news agency she was concerned that the ability to automate creative writing with AI could risk turning the process into a commodity and produce a lot of low-quality books.
"There needs to be transparency from the authors and the platforms about how these books are created," she said.
Lindsay Hamilton, an Amazon spokesperson told Insider: "All books in the store must adhere to our content guidelines, including compliance with intellectual property rights and all other applicable laws."
Representatives for OpenAI did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment made outside normal working hours.