The Collapse of the Written Word (by Stephen klein)

   It is not often that I find an article worth re-posting on LinkedIn since most of what is published on the platform is self promotion and opinion pieces.

  This article about "AI books" is different. It highlights a concerning new trend worth thinking about. 

 

The Book Was Once a Symbol of Deep Thinking and Lasting Insight

1. Something Strange Is Happening on Amazon

Since late 2023, Amazon’s Kindle marketplace has been quietly flooded with books that were never written, at least not in the way we used to understand writing.

These books are authored by GenAI

Most are assembled in hours, some in minutes.

One man recently bragged online about “writing” 300 books since November 2024, using GPT.

2. The Numbers Are Staggering

As of 2025, over 70% of new self-published Kindle books are suspected to be partially or fully AI-generated

500–1,000 new AI-authored books are being uploaded to Amazon daily

A recent survey found that many bestsellers were generated with minimal human intervention

This is a platform-wide structural shift.

3. Quality Has Collapsed
Readers are noticing. So are reviewers.

In some cases, AI-generated books have plagiarized Holocaust memoirs and real authors’ voices

But because the covers look polished, the titles sound convincing, and the keywords are SEO-optimized, people download them anyway.

4. Amazon Is Scrambling to Respond

Amazon has begun to implement measures:

Daily publishing limits per author account

New content guidelines for AI-generated work

Quiet content takedowns under copyright or consumer trust violations

But the truth is this:

The system was never designed to detect synthetic creativity.

It was designed to reward:

Volume

Keywords

Engagement

Conversion

And AI is now better at all four than most humans.

5. What This Means
This is not just a publishing story.
This is a civilization story.

We are watching the collapse of the written word as a cultural artifact.
The book, once a symbol of deep thinking and lasting insight

Is becoming a commodity artifact, generated at scale, indistinguishable from noise.

This is what happens when:

Creativity is measured in output speed

Credibility is based on formatting

Discovery is driven by algorithms

And thought is replaced by prompting

The value of words is decaying.

Not because words don’t matter

But because we’ve made them too easy to manufacture.

7. The Way Back
This isn’t about banning AI.
It’s about redefining what authorship means in a post-generative world.

We need to:

Create visible distinctions between human- and AI-authored works

Build ethical publishing frameworks for synthetic content

Restore economic and cultural incentives for originality

Reinvest in readership, not just production

And most of all

We need to remember that words aren’t content.

They’re a contract between minds.
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The trick with technology is to avoid spreading darkness at the speed of light

Stephen Klein is Founder & CEO of Curiouser.AI, the only AI designed to augment human intelligence. He also teaches AI Ethics at UC Berkeley.
To lsign up, visit curiouser.ai or contact hubble
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