Amazon announced changes to the rules for authors who self-publish on Kindle Direct Publishing after several books were called out as being created in part or entirely using generative AI.
The company is limiting authors to publishing three books in a day according to a blog post on the KDP community forum.
This news comes a month after an author named Jane Friedman reported that someone had created and published a book on KDP using her name.
The content was reportedly sold using her name and was likely authored entirely by a generative AI.
Friedman is an avid blogger so much of her writing is available on the Internet thus making it easier for generative AI engines to ingest her writing and mimic it.
Using artificial intelligence to mimic creative work has led to a number of high-profile class-action lawsuits, including recently where a large group of popular authors including James Patterson, Michael Connelly, George R. R. Marting and many others, collectively sued OpenAI to remove their work from the data used to train the AI engine.
Self-publishing companies have exploded in the last several years with an estimated 300 million titles added annually and worth approximately $1.25 billion in revenue.
Kindle Direct Publishing publishes more than 1.4 million books annually and overall pays close to $520 million in royalties annually for its books and those published through the Amazon marketplace.
Because of the lack of traditional editors and vetting that a traditional publishing house provides, it is easier for AI-created content to sneak through.
And while limiting an author to three books a day seems comically inadequate, it is, at the very least, a start.
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