AI is pumping out books. Are they any good?

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  NPR.

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  Think about some of the western world's most famously prolific writers.

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  You have horror novelist Stephen King, he's written more than 60 bestselling books and hundreds of short stories.

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  There's also sci-fi author Isaac Asimov who produced more than 500 fiction and non-fiction books.

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  And also English romance novelist Barbara Cartland, who wrote more than 700 books during her career.

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  So much swooning.

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  But today, large language models or LLMs can match that kind of output in a single year.

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  The number of new book releases on Amazon almost tripled between 2022 and 2025. That's an increase

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  that can be attributed to LLMs.

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  But are these AI-written books any good?

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  This is The Indicator for Planet Money.

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  I'm Adrienne Ma.

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  And I'm Waylon Wong.

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  Today on the show, we tackle this quality question through an economic lens.

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  Plus, we hear from a human editor at a niche publisher about how they're fighting the slot wars.

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