This is truly an abysmal revelation. I can't really put into words how horrified I am that actual real physical books are now getting AI slop enshitifcation.
There's nothing magic about physical books in a way that might protect them, and it's a terribly low-margin industry that's vulnerable to this kind of behavior.
That's a broad statement that's untrue for most genres, at least right now. However, it is true for the YA lit / chic-lit and the smut-disguised-as-fantasy genres. These already have authors pumping out a book every few months with different characters jammed into similar situations. And people have personalized these kinds of interactions already (CharacterAI and others). Literature is literature, whether human or LLM-generated and will sell like hot cakes if it caters to the common denominator well enough.
It can also be seen in newer fanfics. If you visit AO3 you might get to see a few that are completely written with LLMs and the authors sometimes don't even bother reading it themselves before publishing it. The lower quality is almost always apparent from the get-go.
LLMs can be very useful for writing, but I don't see serious writers using LLMs except for maybe checking facts / as a knowledgebase. The lowest tier of readers was already one-shot by LLMs over a year ago.
Lots of stories on youtube seem to be AI written or highly assisted (With AI generated voices, subtitles and pictures).
I was listening to "HFY Sci-Fi" at one point but there are hundreds of channels with "Getting revenge on the Boss" or 50 other story genres. Each pumping out a new story every week. Some taken from other sources, some AI generated.
Precisely this. Pop literature was already prone to plagiarism before AI because of the sheer volume of slush. "LLM co-authoring" is plagiarism run through the laundry.
OK I'll rephrase, in place of book I will use "cultural anchor" which covers everything. The point remains that it is all under siege.
It’s one thing that the internet is full of slop now, but something about this feels deeply worse. It’s something that has for all of history involved real humans authors. Now it seems some human authors use AI an don’t even bother to check the results make sense.
It's already big in esoterism. A relative of mine was reading some book which upon closer inspection turned out to be a direct ChatGPT printout (yes with the prompts included).