Science fiction writer Tim Boucher says that ChatGPT and other AIs have enabled him to create and illustrate 97 “mini-novels” in nine months. 

The stories are no more than 5,000 words long, about the length of a long magazine article. Chatbots helped him brainstorm ideas and crank out text that he could then edit; Midjourney, an AI image producer, created as many as 140 illustrations for each of the books. 

Each story took six to eight hours to produce, he said.

He refers to his collection as “The AI Lore Books” and calls them “a testament to the potential of AI in augmenting human creativity.”

“My goal was straightforward: To craft a series of unique, captivating e-books, merging dystopian pulp sci-fi with compelling AI world-building,” Boucher wrote in a Newsweek essay. 

The books sell for $1.99 to $3.99 each. Between August and May, Boucher sold $2,000 worth and more than 500 copies, he said, with many readers buying up to 10 at a time. 

“I’ve been able to breathe life into stories and narrative universes that have been brewing in my mind for years,” he wrote.

“It’s inevitable that all artists will encounter and make use of AI tools to some extent,” Boucher concluded. “It will just be about finding the right combination.”

TRENDPOST: Finding that “right combination” is still a work in progress; other authors have used AI to crank out books in a few hours, only to find themselves slammed with complaints of copyright violations.

Also, AI-generated books worth reading still will require skillful human editing to find not only typos but poor choices of word or phrase and to breathe life into text created by a machine.

However, Boucher is entirely correct in saying that AI is rapidly becoming as essential to artists as a keyboard or paints, but it has a limit: It will never recreate the talent or skill of a human creator.