‘What, AI in books!’ you may say. Indeed, with generative AI you can ask your AI application to write a text, given a set of parameters such as number of words, subject, genre, and much more.

When I recently was editing the blurbs of my books on KDP, the publishing platform for the Amazon book store, I was asked this question:
Of course, my answer was a solid No as I do not engage any AI form in writing my books for me. Or do I?

Additionally, let’s have a look at what Amazon defines as AI-generated content:

We define AI-generated content as text, images, or translations created by an
Artificial Intelligence-based tool.

You agree to adhere to our KDP Content Guidelines as part of the terms and
conditions of your participation in the KDP self-publication and distribution
program.

How do I write my books?

Let’s have a look at my writing applications. I do all my writing in Microsoft Word. This word processor has a built-in spelling checker for English and Dutch, the languages in which I write my books.

When I’m done, I run each chapter across the free version of Grammarly, an online spelling and grammar checker. After this, I order a proof copy of the book from Amazon and read that with a red pen handy, marking anything that could be improved upon. Then I edit my manuscript a final time, and upload it to KDP, before pressing the final ‘Publish my Book’ button. With that, the book will be sent to Amazon to be scrutinized for publishing in their webshop.

Is the spelling check in Word considered an AI?

Important fact: While writing, Word does not give me proposals on what words to use next.

According to the Amazon definition above, it is not an AI. It does not ‘create content as text’ for me, I do that all by myself. But it does check my writing and presents proposals that may correct typos in words or deviations in the grammar within sets of words. The Word spelling check perhaps uses a rudimentary form of AI. Grammarly certainly uses a more advanced AI than Word does when it provides this service. But, none of them write the text for me. They merely point out what they consider might be errors in spelling or grammar.

Admittedly, you have to be careful when using these tools. Both provide alternatives of text snippets they think I should replace.

Fun fact:
These proposals are often in conflict with each other; Word instructs me to do this. Then, for the same text, Grammarly says to do something else. Or, worse, revert to what it was before. Apparently, the AI tools do not work with identical instructions…which cannot be seen as a surprise either.

Why does Amazon want to know if an AI was engaged in creating the text?

Earlier in the book registration process, KDP asks if you own the rights to the book you’re about to publish. While this clearly is the case for the books I write, this may not be the case for books or parts of books generated by AI. As we know, every AI is trained on large collections of books and internet articles. These books and articles likely are protected by current copyrights owned by their authors. Since the AI did not originally create the requested content, it is impossible to say which part was directly derived from copyrighted material – a book – and which was not.

By requiring an answer to this question, Amazon is guarding itself against future infringement of copyrighted material they are not aware of at the moment of publishing. I haven’t tried to answer the question with Yes, and do not intend to either as it is most likely that Amazon will not allow the book to be published on their KDP platform.

If you think all of this is in the future, google some of the things below:

• ai generated poems
• ai generated books

…and investigate for yourself.

How about AI in art?

While the above only focusses on AI in books, this is only one facet of the use of AI in arts. Google ‘ai generated art’ and you’ll see there’s a lot more.

Finally:

Feel free to contribute to the above by sending a response via the footer below.

 

Paul
2024-01