Not too long ago, I acquired an odd textual content from a brand new acquaintance. “You will have your individual biography???” it learn. “How did you neglect to inform me this?”
This was information to me. I went to Amazon to analyze. There it was. A biography of Kashmir Hill — title: “The Biography of Kashmir Hill” — had been launched almost a yr earlier, in August 2025. My life story had a mottled brown cowl and a writer I’d by no means heard of earlier than. It had no critiques till I wrote one, asking, as the topic of this work, if I may please converse to the writer. The hardcover price $26.99, which appeared a bit steep, however my editor splurged on a replica and I used to be compelled to learn it.
My biography is 90 pages lengthy and ought to be shorter. It combines info about me which might be broadly obtainable on the web, corresponding to the place I grew up, with generic insights that could possibly be true of anybody, like a horoscope unfold over dozens of pages. “You can’t perceive Kashmir Hill with out understanding her contradictions,” my biographer wrote, together with an excruciatingly lengthy description of my elaborate coffee-making ritual. (Reality verify: My husband does it.)
The guide is flattering, fabricated and completely filled with em dashes. It bears all of the indicators of A.I. slop. I clicked on the writer, one John Crane Miller. His bio web page described him as a “seasoned biographer and cultural analyst,” and his portrait was a broadly used inventory picture of a white man in a swimsuit talking at a convention. “The Biography of Kashmir Hill: The New York Instances Expertise Journalist Who Uncovered Clearview AI, Challenged Large Tech and Redefined Privateness within the Digital Age” was considered one of 10 biographies that Mr. Miller had printed in a single week, all of them about journalists, together with my Instances colleague Mike Isaac; Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic; and Jake Tapper of CNN.
Clocking my curiosity in journalist hagiography, Amazon’s suggestion algorithm advised I try “Dan Quite: Reality and Tenacity,” by a wildly prolific writer named Diane W. Grey. She printed 60 biographies final summer time a few various forged of celebrities, together with Joe Rogan, Celine Dion and the Italian soccer star Paolo Maldini. (That final one had a single, one-star evaluate. “A.I. SLOP,” the individual wrote. “DO NOT BUY.”)
Like me, Mr. Quite had found the existence of his biography. Diane W. Grey had by no means tried to talk with the longtime newscaster, Mr. Quite wrote in a Fb publish final August. However in a plot twist that shocked me and plenty of of his followers, he mentioned he had learn and loved it. “The guide is obtainable on Amazon for anybody ,” he added. (Mr. Quite declined an interview about this.)
Greater than 20,000 folks appreciated his publish. As an writer myself, I’m all too conscious that “likes” don’t essentially translate to gross sales, however certainly a number of purchased the Quite guide. And that, after all, is the hope of the folks creating these. Make-money-fast influencers and passive-income lovers on Reddit have been spreading the phrase for a while: Use A.I. to jot down a guide. If it sells, it’s free cash.
Amazon doesn’t thoughts if folks hawk A.I.-generated books on its platform, except they’re actually and deeply horrible. “Charlie Kirk: An Inspiring Journey of Younger Political Conservative and Activist Who Fights for America,” printed in February 2025, turned an Amazon greatest vendor after Mr. Kirk was killed final September — which implies it most likely offered hundreds of copies. However after dozens of scathing critiques known as it “mind-numbing,” “a rip-off” and “a shame,” Amazon took it down.
A spokesman for Amazon, Josh Pflug, declined to touch upon the guide about Mr. Kirk, however mentioned the corporate invested “vital time and assets to make sure our pointers are adopted,” and would “take away books that don’t adhere to those pointers.”
Among the many causes for removing is “poor buyer expertise.” That’s definitely what I felt paging via my biography and studying that my love for my husband “unfolded with the type of gradual certainty that tends to final” throughout “the straightforward change of guide suggestions.” Boring and incorrect. (It occurred whereas singing karaoke.)
Two enterprise college professors, inquisitive about A.I. books and whether or not anybody truly likes them, gathered information about 10 million books printed on Amazon during the last 5 years. They discovered that the variety of e-books printed monthly had tripled because the launch of ChatGPT, to greater than 300,000 on the finish of final yr, from round 100,000 in 2022. (Amazon mentioned that its inner metrics didn’t present that degree of progress, however wouldn’t share its figures.)
As a result of romance sells, the professors thought it will be the style most prone to A.I. intervention, however as an alternative it was nonfiction — a time period that ought to most likely be used loosely on this context. Whereas A.I.-assisted books acquired decrease buyer rankings than human-made ones, they deemed A.I.’s entry into the market a constructive improvement, as a result of the books have been promoting, if modestly. As economists, they instructed me, they’re much less involved with literary high quality or buyer satisfaction than income progress and market growth.
“‘Fifty Shades of Gray’ is an excellent guide to economists as a result of it brings a number of worth to customers,” mentioned one of many authors, Imke Reimers of Cornell College, by means of rationalization. My biography was no “Fifty Shades.” The one punishing half was studying it.
I wished to search out out who was writing these A.I. books and the way a lot cash they have been making doing it. However there was an issue: My biographer didn’t wish to discuss to me.
A Man Behind the A.I.
John Crane Miller had no contact data or revealing particulars in his bio. Realizing he mixed “meticulous analysis with compelling storytelling” was no assist in monitoring him down. Mr. Pflug, of Amazon, mentioned the corporate didn’t present contact data for sellers to guard their privateness. So I left that evaluate politely asking the writer who had invaded my privateness to be in contact.
Whereas I waited for a response, I stored searching, and got here throughout yet one more A.I. biographer, named Invoice Johns. In a information article, Mr. Johns had been recognized as a “made-up individual” by a bona fide, best-selling human writer who was pissed off that A.I.-generated imitations — together with a guide by Invoice Johns — have been competing along with his personal extensively reported guide.
However Invoice Johns, 70, was not made up. He lived on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and, not like my biographer, was keen to speak.
Mr. Johns, who has lengthy curly white hair and the bronzed pores and skin of somebody who spends a substantial period of time exterior, retired in 2024 from his work as a cybersecurity marketing consultant. Divorced and residing alone with two Shih Tzus, he abruptly had a number of time on his palms. He was inquisitive about A.I. and determined to experiment with it.
“Virtually everybody I do know says they wish to write a guide,” he mentioned. “It’s a really romantic idea to take a seat down and toil, web page after web page and paragraph after paragraph, nevertheless it doesn’t make financial sense.”
It’s arduous to disagree with that, although I can’t say I agree with Mr. Johns’s answer: Have an A.I. chatbot do it as an alternative. He spent a few weeks and $20 on ChatGPT to assist him write concerning the historical past of hacking and printed his first guide, a whopping 651-pager, in March 2025.
After all, that was attainable solely as a result of OpenAI, the corporate that created ChatGPT, had ingested the work of these romantic toilers — Wikipedia editors, Reddit commenters, guide authors and reporters like me. (I need to point out right here that The Instances has an ongoing copyright lawsuit in opposition to OpenAI, although the A.I. agency says it’s “with out advantage.”)
Mr. Johns’s guide on hacking, “Ghosts within the Machine,” offered solely a few copies, however he was hooked.
Mr. Johns now has 445 books on the market on Amazon. He orders a paperback copy of every one and retains them on 4 rotating white bookshelves which might be crowded awkwardly subsequent to a sofa in his front room. All of them function a photograph of him in a severe darkish swimsuit — which is A.I. generated. “It was both that or placed on a swimsuit and take selfies,” he mentioned.
The books are roughly organized by matter: sports activities, eccentric geniuses, well-known bridges, alcohol, the Chesapeake Bay. These are matters that curiosity the eccentric Mr. Johns, who has a view of that bay from the well-stocked tiki bar he inbuilt his yard. It encompasses a large-screen tv, splendid for watching sporting occasions.
“Numerous books by no means promote a replica,” he conceded throughout an interview at his house in June. However he does promote a number of hundred books monthly, every incomes him roughly $7. A majority of his gross sales are bodily books, which Amazon prints on demand, although I’d wager that the folks shopping for them don’t understand that.
The vacation gift-giving season was good to Mr. Johns: He offered 821 books for a revenue of just about $6,000, per the Amazon gross sales report he confirmed me. “I wouldn’t characterize them as flying off the cabinets,” he mentioned, “nevertheless it’s bar cash at the least.”
I puzzled what number of drinks my biography had purchased for John Crane Miller, however he nonetheless hadn’t replied to me. I had taken “The Biography of Kashmir Hill” with me to Maryland and requested Mr. Johns what he considered it. He flipped via the skinny quantity and scoffed. “There’s not a number of content material right here,” he mentioned. “I may do that one by midday.”
He mentioned I deserved a “400-page guide” and, though he usually makes books solely about useless folks, supplied to jot down it. I laughed, possibly a bit hysterically, and declined.
We went into his house workplace, which had two curved display screens and a mechanical keyboard with snazzy rainbow backlighting. Mr. Johns sat down and confirmed me how he would usually begin writing a guide.
Into ChatGPT he typed: “If I have been to jot down a guide about Kashmir Hill, what would you advocate as a body?” He then requested for a desk of contents as I seemed on, nervously.
Often, he mentioned, he does a bit extra analysis first, gathering hyperlinks to related web sites, giving these to ChatGPT and asking it to establish historic, financial and cultural “anchors” for a guide. He has ChatGPT draft every chapter, however little by little, as a result of for those who ask for too many phrases in a single go, he mentioned, it begins “drifting and hallucinating.” He used to have ChatGPT create endnotes with citations till he observed that it was falsely claiming he had truly interviewed folks. (My biographer had no such qualms. He claimed to have learn my childhood diary and spoken with individuals who know me nicely “and people who want they didn’t.”)
Mr. Johns reads what ChatGPT produces, pushes again if he thinks it wants modifications after which copies and pastes the textual content right into a Phrase doc. He goals for 10 to fifteen chapters, which work out to round 300 pages, after which makes use of Amazon’s Kindle Create app to transform the textual content into an e-book manuscript. He has ChatGPT generate a canopy picture — usually vastly superior to the plain one on my biography — after which uploads all of it to Amazon, which doesn’t cost for the privilege. His aim has been to jot down 10 books per week, which is the utmost Amazon permits.
I requested if he had learn his books. “That’s a humorous query,” he mentioned. “I definitely learn them as they’re being written.”
I flipped via a number of whereas visiting, however I discovered Invoice Johns, the individual, far more attention-grabbing than his books.
When he uploads a guide to Amazon, it asks whether or not A.I. instruments have been used to create it. He at all times says sure, for the “total work, with intensive modifying.” (Maybe a stretch of the phrase “intensive.”) Consumers of his books may prefer to learn about that A.I. use, however Amazon doesn’t reveal it to them.
The Authors Guild has been lobbying Amazon since 2023 to label A.I.-generated books, mentioned Mary Rasenberger, the group’s chief govt. Amazon is resistant, she mentioned, as a result of it doesn’t wish to punish those that are sincere about utilizing A.I. whereas rewarding individuals who lie about it. (Amazon declined to remark.)
Ms. Rasenberger herself inadvertently purchased an A.I. slop guide on Amazon concerning the artwork of dialog.
“There was not a single attention-grabbing level that the guide made,” she mentioned. “A.I. is only a phrase prediction machine. There’s no considering, no actual creativity, no soul behind it.”
The New Kitsch?
A bunch of lecturers not too long ago made a provocative argument: What if A.I. slop is sweet?
Eamon Duede, a thinker of science at Purdue College and one of many authors of a paper known as “Why Slop Issues,” mentioned A.I. introduced pleasure to individuals who wished to create one thing that only a few different folks would discover attention-grabbing — like pictures of their mates in historic scenes.
“Folks get an infinite quantity of enjoyment and satisfaction out of making stuff if it’s low effort,” he mentioned. Individuals who wish to be inventive, however may not be excellent at it, can flip to A.I. and discover “a bunch of limitations eliminated.”
The paper additionally means that possibly A.I. content material isn’t — or isn’t at all times — the aesthetic abomination critics make it out to be. Most individuals complain about A.I. writing, however when given blind checks of some paragraphs they’ve generally been discovered to choose it. (This may be a results of what’s known as a “sip check fallacy,” the phenomenon that explains why folks choose the sweeter Pepsi to Coke in a fast style check, however reverse their selection once they should devour a complete can.)
Anti-slop criticism, the teachers argue, resembles that levied a century in the past in opposition to “kitsch” — mass-produced, business artwork like journal covers and comics. Perhaps A.I. slop will sooner or later be held in increased regard, in the identical manner Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Night Submit illustrations are actually appreciated regardless of having as soon as been seen by the elite as soulless and cheesy (an outline which may function an correct blurb of my biography).
I used to be curious what readers considered Mr. Johns’s A.I. kitsch. He obtained 5 stars from one reviewer, however she had not learn the guide. It had been a present for her husband, and he, probably a five-star partner who didn’t wish to harm her emotions, “appears to get pleasure from it,” she wrote. The critiques from individuals who had truly learn the books have been brutal.
“One of many worst books I’ve ever bought,” mentioned one reader. “Boring, verbose and repetitive,” mentioned one other. “If you’re on the lookout for an incredible School Soccer guide, this isn’t it,” mentioned a purchaser of Mr. Johns’s “School Soccer Dynasties,” considered one of his hottest books over the vacations. “This guide is plagued by errors all through and the writer tends to ramble on and be very repetitive.”
Mr. Johns says if he reads a one-star evaluate and decides “that man is true,” he’ll take the guide down. “I don’t take them personally,” he mentioned of such critiques.
