AI: Game On Or Game Over?

 August 13, 2025

   Hang on to your footnote receipts, here comes the AI knockoff books. Our friend Peter Brand has a new book out on Sadie Earp which we are excerpting in the next issue of True West.

   And, here is one of the AI knockoffs, utilizing all the primary sources that Peter used and then spinning it out just different enough to avoid plagiarism charges.

   And, here's Brian Burrough's new book:

And here's the AI knockoff:

   You'll notice these guys added the "inspired by Bryan Burrough" so they get a by, but I think you know where this is all going. Thank god biographies are still legit.

An AI produced biography on PAH

   So I called PAH and he laughed and told me he already bought the kindle version and read it and laughed all the way through the 33 pages. Essentially, AI scrapes up everything off of the web that mentions him and then spins it out with a wide but somewhat non-specific narrative. As Paul puts it, "They didn't have anything about my previous relationships. And the AI avoids anything that might be liable, so it's pretty safe and bland."

"What irritates me is that I’ll spend years researching the primary source material at archives, museums, etc., and once my book is published as an eBook, someone can instruct AI to regurgitate that information into their own book, in little or no time at all. The authors who should be really worried, though, are those who don’t do primary research and write books by simply reading other books. That’s exactly what AI does. Actually, that’s what it’s already doing."

—Mark Lee Gardner