There are many different AI programs. Some you may see on your Google searches, others—like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini—are all options when choosing your AI tools. It’s important for us to know how this works, though.
AI uses a tool called scraping. They scan everything on the internet to learn and glean as much as possible from the information they have. Think about the AI Insight when you Google something. The short of it is that the AI is scanning for relevant information, sorting out the unnecessary information, and presenting you with the best answer. This might not seem bad because Google and other search engines have been doing this for years. But it’s when things like “write me a five-paragraph essay” or “create me a picture of a fictional character” are entered into the chat that things get dicey.
Not to get knee deep in copyright law, but basically, when something is published (like a book, an article, or anything creative), you don’t always know how it’s being used. And when it’s posted on the internet, it can be used to train AI at any point. Most of the time, the parent companies legally buy books (from big box stores or manufacturers), cut them up, scan them into the AI training program, and then destroy the books. There are companies that do this without destroying the written word—like Google—and then there are companies like Anthropic that destroy the books after using them to train their AI.
After the AI is trained, when certain prompts are entered into the chat, the bot can scrape all the information and creative work it’s consumed to reproduce something that resembles original work. But it’s just a shuffling around of someone else’s work, and it’s hard to copyright something that doesn’t belong to a human being.
In recent years, there has been an uptick in authors finding books published in their names and written in their style. But to be clear—they didn’t write it. It’s super simple to use AI to write a book, and super easy to get it published on Amazon or other self-publishing platforms, this could be done by publishers who own the author’s name and likeness, or by people wanting to create a book and sell it. Except, as we talked about, AI scraping existing work creates something that’s effectively stolen.
The fact of the matter is, it’s faster to write a book and publish it using AI than to manually create something and traditionally publish it. Realistically, when you are publishing a book with AI, you just need someone to review what the AI creates and edit where necessary. So the publishing time goes from on average three years to a couple of hours, or tops, a couple of days. Furthermore, there is an increase and expansion of the Young Adult genre. Audiences want to read YA, and supply has to meet the demand.
Short economics lesson: if AI books are cheaper, faster, and more economical to create, and if the way they are produced, released, and sold is more efficient, why not make human intervention obsolete? At some point, it comes down to money. Recently, Barnes and Noble’s CEO released a statement saying he would be okay with AI books on the shelves of the big-box store as long as they’re clearly marked. He also says that if you don’t want to read it, don’t buy it, and if you stop buying it, they will stop selling it.
While this is a very morally complex topic, the most consistent way to make changes is for consumers to swear off AI-generated content, do their research, and require AI creators to clearly denote the use of AI.
But here’s the honest truth that TikTok isn’t going to tell you: AI doesn’t affect you if you don’t want it to. This isn’t a call to arms, or me begging you to support human-written creativity. Even though you should contact your bookstores and ask them not to stock AI books, and you should screen every book to make sure it’s not written by robots. But it’s the job of authors, publishers, and creators to produce books that audiences want to buy and read.
So support your favorite author, support your favorite bookstore, support Pine Reads, and help us support literature and protect the creative rights of authors.
Hayley Bigelow, Pine Reads Review Writer