Everyone Is Writing a Novel, Even ChatGPT

The rise of widely available, easy-to-use artificial intelligence tools is creating a new genre of robot-generated literature. Amazon already offers over 200 books (and climbing) with ChatGPT listed as an author or co-author.

The reasons for people to “write” these books varies. Some authors were previously discouraged by the time and effort to write a book, and are now turning to ChatGPT to generate short novels in hours. They are also combining text generated by ChatGPT with illustrations from platforms such as DALL-E, and bringing their creations to market instantly online.

“The idea of writing a book finally seemed possible,” Brett Schickler, a salesman in Rochester, New York, tells(Opens in a new window) Reuters. “I thought ‘I can do this.'” He created a 30-page illustrated children’s e-book in hours by using ChatGPT to generate blocks of text from his prompts. The book, now listed on Amazon for $2.99 on Kindle or $9.99 printed, aims to teach kids about saving money. The main character is Sammy the Squirrel, who collects and invests acorns.

Schickler does not list ChatGPT as an author on the front or back cover. The product page(Opens in a new window) also does not mention ChatGPT, nor the platform he used to create illustrations.

Amazon’s policies do not currently require authors to disclose this. The e-commerce giant controls as much as 80% of the e-book market, Reuters notes, meaning a large volume of readers may find themselves unknowingly reading computer-generated work to their children or discussing it in book club groups.

The desire to easily create a book on ChatGPT echoes sentiments from the editor of science fiction magazine Clarkesworld, Neil Clarke, who recently shut down submissions after a spike in AI-created work. “There’s an honest interest in being published, but not in having to do the actual work,” Clarke wrote in a blog post.

Two books written with ChatGPT: one that doesn’t list the tool as an author (left), and one that does (right).
(Credit: Amazon)

Books for professionals about how to use ChatGPT, written by ChatGPT, are also on the rise. One of them, ChatGPT for Nonfiction Authors: How to Use ChatGPT to Write Better, Faster, and More Effectively, lists the AI bot as a co-author alongside main author Hassan Oman. In this context, naming ChatGPT’s contribution may bolster the author’s perceived commitment to using the tool.

Oman’s book instructs authors on how to enhance their work by using ChatGPT. It suggests tips such as: “You can use the output for inspiration and mix and match ideas to create your own unique content.” Oman also encourages using it for administrative functions like writing sales pitches, emails, and social media posts for promotion. His book has a 4.6-star rating.

While we’ve yet to see a book written by ChatGPT with Harry Potter-level success, that’s not to say it’s not coming. In the meantime, algorithms will favor those with good reviews while making badly reviewed ones harder to find and sell.

Microsoft and Google have both released their versions of ChatGPT, tripling the number of artificial intelligence tools and accessibility of them for future authors. It remains to be seen how this type of work will affect the quality and volume of available books, and how the traditional publishing industry will react. Is ChatGPT simply the new ghostwriter?

Generative computing systems like these also go beyond literature: to them, a coding language is just as fair game for manipulation as the English language. Chatbots have also raised alarms in the software engineering community for passing coding interviews, finding and fixing bugs in code, and moving robotic arms.