After months of complaints from the Authors Guild and other groups, Amazon.com has started requiring writers who want to sell books through its e-book program to tell the company in advance that their work includes artificial intelligence material.
The Authors Guild praised the new regulations, which were posted Wednesday, as a “welcome first step” toward deterring the proliferation of computer-generated books on the online retailer’s site. Many writers feared computer-generated books could crowd out traditional works and would be unfair to consumers who didn’t know they were buying AI content.
In a statement posted on its website, the Guild expressed gratitude toward “the Amazon team for taking our concerns into account and enacting this important step toward ensuring transparency and accountability for AI-generated content.”
This is absolutely a good move, though I don’t know how effective it’ll be on its own. Unfettered AI garbage “content” is soon going to flood every storefront and service around, and the only way to really solve it is to close things down and move to more highly curated platforms. I wish that wasn’t the case, but I can image a future where it’s hard to find anything worthwhile in a sea of AI-generated junk.