People across all kinds of industry and professions are worried about whether or not the rise and ease of access to A.I. is going to put their job or way of life in jeopardy – and now we can add “author” to that list.

Because there are already hundreds of books being sold that weren’t written by humans at all.

According to a recent report in Reuters, over 200 e-books for sale in the Kindle store list ChatGPT as the author. The real number is likely much higher, since no one forces authors to disclose whether or not they used A.I. at this point.

A.I. generators like ChatGPT make it easy to quickly write and publish a book – you can find a number of tutorials on YouTube and TikTok already.

Some people are even using the software to generate children’s books, complete with illustrations.

Publishers like Authors Guild executive director Mary Rasenberger are rightfully concerned.

“This is something we really need to be worried about, these books will flood the market and a lot of authors are going to be out of work. There needs to be transparency from the authors and the platforms about how these books are created or you’re going to end up with a lot of low-quality books.”

People making money off these so low-quality books are unlikely to care, however, and Amazon hasn’t announced any changes that would help identify or filter-out A.I. authored books.

Their official statement is that they abide by “intellectual property and all other applicable laws.”

It’s a brave new world, and it looks like authors and publishers are going to have to fight for their place in it just like everyone else.