How Authors Are Taking On Generative AI

(Image Courtesy of Jane Friedman)

This is an installment of Automate Me, an ongoing Study Hall series about how AI technology is transforming the media and publishing landscape.

When author Jane Friedman found out her name had been slapped on books likely produced by AI, she realized it could happen to anyone.

As a reporter and author who covers the publishing industry, Friedman has been thinking about artificial intelligence for the better part of a year. On her website, where she publishes writing advice by herself and other writers, posts explore how tools like ChatGPT can be helpful for authors by assisting them in pulling comparable titles for book proposals, or using the chatbot as a sounding board for writing ideas.

As much as Friedman believed there were productive uses for AI for writers, she also wondered how long it would be until someone used generative artificial intelligence to imitate a popular author.

She had no idea she was about to become the poster child for it.

In early August, one of Friedman’s readers got in touch with her. This reader had been browsing Amazon when they came across books that had Friedman’s name on it — but they didn’t seem like things she would write. 

“I immediately went to look at the books,” she says. “They were in my area of expertise: writing and publishing. They were clearly meant to be passed off as something I had put out there.” But she had not written the five titles now available on Amazon. She suspected, very quickly, that these books had been written by artificial intelligence.