Amazon permits authors and publishers to sell AI-generated books, but that fact must now be disclosed when uploading work to Amazon KDP.
This new policy surfaced last week, now found under Content Guidelines for KDP authors. It says, “We require you to inform us of AI-generated content (text, images, or translations) when you publish a new book or make edits to and republish an existing book through KDP. AI-generated images include cover and interior images and artwork. You are not required to disclose AI-assisted content.”
How will Amazon know if the author is being honest? They probably won’t know, at least for now, since existing tools cannot identify AI-generated content with 100 percent accuracy.
What’s the difference between AI-generated and AI-assisted content? The guidelines offer further detail on this, but in a nutshell: If you create the content yourself, then use AI tools to edit or improve it, then the book is AI assisted. If AI generated the book, then you edited the content, it’s AI generated.
What Amazon will do with this information is anyone’s guess. It is not indicating on the retail or consumer side when a book is generated by AI, but that could change in the future. The Authors Guild has a statement about this development.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
