The debate about AI in literature seems to oscillate between two extremes: AI will destroy literature, or it's just spellcheck with better PR. I've been there, too. But neither is correct, and here’s why:
The book market does not exist in isolation. Other creative industries have already walked this road: music, stock photography, visual arts. They all show the same pattern.
The Five Phases (and Where Books Are Right Now)
Every creative industry that's undergone AI disruption follows the exact same sequence.
Phase 1: Novelty. "Look what AI can do!" The outputs are impressive but obviously flawed. Incumbents dismiss it. The public debates whether AI can "really" create art.
Phase 2: Flood. Production costs collapse. Volume explodes. Quality is uneven but improving fast. Platforms struggle with curation. Discovery gets harder for everyone. AI-related revenue at Shutterstock surged to $104 million in 2023, but failed to offset stagnant traditional licensing income. Platforms made money. Photographers didn't.
Phase 3: Indistinguishability. This is the critical threshold. 97% of music listeners now report being unable to distinguish between human-composed and AI-composed music. Let that sink in. Ninety-seven percent. Once you can't tell, you can't charge a premium for being human-made. The whole "artisanal, hand-crafted" defence collapses.
Phase 4: Platform Value Capture. Total market revenue grows. Individual creator income shrinks. Global recorded music revenues climbed to $29.6 billion in 2024. Music creators will see 24% of their revenues at risk by 2028. The industry gets bigger. Amazon, Spotify, and Netflix capture the surplus. Individual musicians get poorer.
Phase 5: Bifurcation (but not the one you expected). The market doesn't split into "AI vs. human." It splits into "relationships" vs. "commodity." In music, direct-to-fan revenue grew 30% in 2023, while streaming royalties per play kept falling. The winners aren't the "human-made" artists. It’s the ones with direct audience relationships who monetise through multiple channels, regardless of how the music was made.
Yes, you read that right: Regardless of how the music was made.
Books are somewhere between Phase 2 and Phase 3 right now. Nearly half of the 1,279 authors surveyed in mid-2025 reported using generative AI for writing, more are considering it.
What This Means for Readers
You are almost certainly reading AI-assisted books without knowing it. Some of them may be better than they would have been otherwise. A writer with a brilliant premise but shaky prose can now produce something polished enough to deliver on the promise of their idea.