AI Ebooks on Amazon: 19 Titles, Decline of Non-AI Options

An analysis of over 14,000 ebooks sold on Amazon between 2023 and 2026 reveals a surge in titles containing AI-generated text, while non-AI works are losing market share. The amounts spent are growing at a slower pace than the supply, raising the question of "market harm" at the heart of fair use. The U.S. Copyright Office has already marked this territory, while a federal judge has validated the digitization of owned books for training purposes. An industry executive believes that the "no harm" argument no longer holds up against these figures.

On Amazon, AI Titles Multiply While Non-AI Titles Decline

Researchers examined over 14,000 ebooks sold on Amazon between 2023 and 2026. They identified numerous works containing significant volumes of AI-generated text, in quantities sufficient to saturate the market for other authors. The supply of available titles has increased by 19 times, while the total amount spent by readers has only increased by nine times. In this context, the market share of books without AI-generated text has decreased as AI titles have proliferated.

Fair Use Scrutinized for Economic Impact

The U.S. Copyright Office studied this issue last year and emphasized the importance of the fair use criterion concerning the economic impact on the original work. The Office determined that using protected works to create competing commercial content exceeded the traditional limits of fair use. The main challenge was demonstrating this harm. The results presented by the researchers align with the type of elements that the Office indicated courts should look for.

Digitizing an Owned Book for Training Found to Be Compliant

Anthropic purchased millions of used books, removed their spines to digitize their content for training its models, and then destroyed the copies. According to copyright law, it is permissible to digitize a book one owns as long as no additional copies are produced. In a highly publicized case, a federal judge ruled that this phase of Anthropic's process fell under fair use.

On X, Ed Newton-Rex Challenges the "No Harm" Argument

Ed Newton-Rex, CEO of the nonprofit organization Fairly Trained, points out that AI companies claim their models do not financially affect the creators from whom they learn. Regarding the study on ebooks, he wrote on X that this argument is "well and truly dead."