ChatGPT might actually be a threat to writers. Because he is able to write long and neatly, some have already written books using this application and even sold them on Amazon.
Brett Schicler initially never imagined he would publish a book. But after learning the capabilities of ChatGPT, he smelled the opportunity.
"The idea of writing a book finally felt possible. I thought I could do it," said the New Yorker, as quoted by us from the New York Post.
Using ChatGPT, which can generate text from simple instructions, Schickler created a 30-page illustrated children's ebook in just hours. Then, he sells them through his self-publishing unit at Amazon.
In the book's story, Sammy the Squirrel, who is also roughly drawn using AI, learns from his friend about saving. He made a piggy bank in the shape of an acorn and invested in a business trading acorns. Sammy became the richest squirrel in the forest, making his friends jealous.
"The Wise Little Squirrel: A Tale of Saving and Investing," available on the Amazon Kindle store for USD 2.99 or USD 9.99 for the print version, only sold for less than USD 100. Although not much, it was enough to inspire him to wrote another book using ChatGPT.
"I can see people making full career out of this," says Schickler, who uses hints on ChatGPT like "writing a story about a father teaching his son financial literacy."
There are apparently more than 200 e-books on Amazon's Kindle store as of mid-February that list ChatGPT as author or co-author, including "How to Write and Create Content Using ChatGPT," and the poetry collection "Echoes from the Universe." The number is increasing every day.
But since not all are listed, there could be many more written with ChatGPT. Inevitably, this phenomenon worries the authors of the book.
"This is something we really need to worry about, these books are going to flood the market and a lot of writers are going to be out of work," said Mary Rasenberger, executive director of the Authors Guild writers group. ChatGPT capabilities can turn book writing into a commodity.
"There has to be transparency from authors and platforms about how these books are written, or you're going to end up with a lot of low quality books," he said.