AI book mills are flooding Amazon with biographies no one asked for

AI-generated books are rapidly expanding Amazon’s catalogue, often with little disclosure to customers and limited evidence of human authorship. Kashmir Hill reports in The New York Times that an AI generated biography of her appeared on Amazon without her knowledge or participation.

The 90 page book, titled “The Biography of Kashmir Hill,” mixed public facts with invented details about her life. It described a coffee ritual that Hill says her husband actually performs and fabricated accounts of her personal relationships. The alleged author, John Crane Miller, presented himself as an experienced biographer but used a stock photograph and published 10 biographies of journalists in a single week.

After Hill posted an Amazon review asking the author to contact her, the book disappeared. Other titles attributed to Miller also vanished from Amazon. His author page remained online. Amazon does not provide contact details for sellers, saying it protects their privacy.

A growing market for AI written titles

The case highlights a wider market in cheaply produced books. Two business school professors who examined data on 10 million Amazon books found that monthly ebook releases rose from roughly 100,000 in 2022 to more than 300,000 by the end of last year. Amazon disputes that its own figures show growth at that scale but has not published its internal data.

The researchers found that nonfiction appeared especially exposed to AI production. AI assisted books received lower ratings than books made by human authors, but the economists viewed the additional sales and wider market as a positive outcome.

Amazon allows AI generated books on its marketplace, provided they meet its guidelines. Josh Pflug, an Amazon spokesman, told the Times that the company invests substantial resources in enforcement and removes titles that violate its rules. One reason for removal is a poor customer experience.

That standard leaves room for books that are low quality but not clearly prohibited. Customers also cannot generally see whether a publisher told Amazon that AI created the work. Authors must disclose the use of AI tools during the upload process, but Amazon does not display that information on product pages.

“Bar money” from automated publishing

Hill also interviewed Bill Johns, a retired cybersecurity consultant in Maryland who says he has created 445 books with ChatGPT since 2024. He uses the chatbot to plan, draft and revise chapters, then formats the files for Amazon’s print on demand and Kindle systems. He also uses AI to create cover images.

Johns says he reads the material while it is produced and makes changes when necessary. He acknowledges that many books do not sell. Still, he says he sells a few hundred copies a month, typically earning about $7 per copy. During one holiday season, he reported selling 821 books for nearly $6,000 in profit.

The Authors Guild has urged Amazon to label AI generated books since 2023. Its chief executive, Mary Rasenberger, told the Times that disclosure would help readers make informed choices. She says Amazon worries that mandatory labels could disadvantage publishers who disclose AI use while rewarding those who conceal it.

Critics describe such titles as “AI slop,” meaning low effort, error prone material generated at scale. Some academics argue that AI can still help people create and enjoy content that would otherwise never exist. But the reviews of Johns’s books cited by Hill were frequently negative, with readers reporting errors, repetition and weak research.

For content professionals, the episode illustrates a practical issue: AI can reduce the cost and time needed to produce a book, but it does not replace verification, original reporting, editorial judgment or clear disclosure. Those gaps can affect readers, the people portrayed in a book and authors competing in the same marketplace.