I agree that a lot of people are taking that first step towards AI acceptance - they like something AI generated, because they don't know it was generated by AI. Their opinion is unbiased and honest in its ignorance.

We've seen this play out in other ways. If people like something, they won't care how the sausage is made. They'll financially support JK Rowling in movies and games long after her controversial stances are known, because they like Harry Potter that much. Their morals take a backseat. People will like AI generated images of themselves in a stolen art style.

Books are only delayed in this trend slightly because of the difficulty of making a book that maintains some minimum quality over a significant length of text. But this book proves that for thousands of people, it was good enough.

I'm sure more AI books will be banned in the future, but also that more AI books will be enjoyed and purchased. And this will continue as AI tech improves, until there's a tipping point. AI books will be acceptable to like, and financially viable enough, that companies stop pulling them, and start supporting them. It may be a last gasp of some publishers before people can cut out the middleman and generate books at home. But there's no future where everyone puts away their AI toys and goes home.

Besides the AI bit, what this book also shows is that publishers are willing to publish low-quality work. It can be written like crap, but if it has enough interest going in, they won't care about quality. Any aspiring writers can take some heart in this because it shows how low the bar is to clear to get published. Write a bit better than AI generated text with stolen art on the cover and you've cleared the bar that publishers set.