The move by Amazon reflects growing concerns over AI's impact on the publishing industry. Notably, comedian Sarah Silverman and authors Christopher Golden and Richard Kadre are suing OpenAI and Meta, alleging that their AI language models were trained using copyrighted material. The plaintiffs claim that some of the training data may have been sourced from online torrent repositories containing copyrighted books.
Key takeaways:
- Amazon has introduced a new policy limiting authors to self-publishing a maximum of three books per day on its platform.
- The change was announced on the Kindle Direct Publishing forum, with Amazon stating it is in response to the rapid evolution of generative AI in publishing.
- The policy comes after a self-published book about the Maui wildfires, suspected to be AI-generated, gained attention. The book had several anomalies, including its timeline and repetitive phrasing.
- AI's influence in the publishing industry has been controversial, with authors like Sarah Silverman, Christopher Golden, and Richard Kadre suing OpenAI and Meta over allegations of training their language models with copyrighted material.