“Follow the money” is often a wise phrase when it comes to evaluating studies, and one I advocate regularly in this column (alongside the slightly more arch “they would say that”). Last week saw a rather unexpected development along those lines, as OpenAI decided they wanted to invoke the principle in relation to ongoing legal suits. Specifically, they have requested that courts set aside a study we've heard a lot about: Tuhin Chakrabarty's paper on the impact of generative AI on the book market.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
That paper specifically argued that the increase in generative AI use and the rising number of titles stemming from it had an impact on the book market. The finding lines up very well with the claim in the suit against OpenAI that its GPT model has a diluting effect on the market. What OpenAI argues in its submission to the courts is that the money that funded the survey can be traced back to an interested party. This claim is based on amounts listed in Chakrabarty's public CV. Chakrabarty has denied the claim, stating that the grant referred to funded a different piece of research. What the courts decide to do could of course have major consequences. Watch this space.
BISG's 2026 AI Survey
Meanwhile, BISG (Book Industry Study Group) has published its 2026 study of AI in the North American book industry. The study had 771 respondents including seventy indie authors, finding that while institutional AI use grew in that time from 48 percent to 63 percent, individual use fell from 46 percent to 38 percent. When it comes to indie authors, it seems that we have a unique use profile that essentially fits with where we most feel the pressure points in trying to juggle so many tasks. Seventy-three percent of indies reported using AI for marketing, compared to around 40 percent of those employed elsewhere in the industry, while around half of indies also used AI for research and publicity.
Also of note are the findings about risk concerns. There hasn't been a growth from 2025 to 2026 in concern over copyright in relation to AI, but that may in part be because the level was already at a very high 86 percent. But the risk to livelihoods has increased significantly, up seventeen points to 80 percent.
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