{"id":716875,"date":"2026-06-21T06:16:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T06:16:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/716875\/"},"modified":"2026-06-21T06:16:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T06:16:21","slug":"readers-are-waging-war-on-ai-slop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/716875\/","title":{"rendered":"Readers Are Waging War On AI Slop"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article is part of\u00a0Upstream<\/a>, The Daily Wire\u2019s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories \u2014 from our featured writers to you.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The publishing industry may have an AI slop problem, and readers are not OK.<\/p>\n

Book fans reacted with horror<\/a>\u00a0when Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt said during an interview last month that as long as the \u201cauthor\u201d discloses that the book is AI-generated, it can be stocked on store shelves.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have actually no problem selling any book, as long as it doesn\u2019t masquerade or pretend to be something that it isn\u2019t, and that it has an essential quality to it, and that the customer, the reader, wants it,\u201d Daunt said during a \u201cToday\u201d show interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo as long as an AI-written book says it\u2019s an AI-written book and doesn\u2019t pretend to be something else and isn\u2019t ripping off somebody else, as long as that\u2019s clearly stated and the customer wants to buy it, then we will stock them,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

This led to more than a few meltdowns online, with diehard readers pushing back against the relentless wave of AI in the publishing world. All hope is not lost, however, as at least one publishing veteran said Daunt is wrong about one essential fact. In his experience, customers are moving away from AI and embracing human content instead.<\/p>\n

Keith Riegert, president of The Stable Book Group and CEO of Ulysses Press and VeloPress Books, has been watching the AI wars play out in real time. And while the Barnes & Noble CEO\u2019s recent comments about AI book selling sent shockwaves through literary circles and beyond, Riegert wasn\u2019t surprised.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that it makes sense. I think it is really disappointing, but it is the direction that everything is going,\u201d he told The Daily Wire in an exclusive interview. \u201cIt is a very clear signal \u2014 and should be a clear signal to every industry \u2014 that this is a monumental threat to the way that people make a living and to just about every white-collar job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Riegert knows the industry well. His parents founded Ulysses Press in 1983, launching with \u201cHidden Hawaii\u201d and going on to create one of the pioneering adventure travel imprints of its era. When the internet essentially killed off travel books in the early 2000s, the company pivoted to data-driven publishing. The Stable Book Group now encompasses four publishing companies and a distribution operation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During our conversation, Riegert said he thinks it\u2019s worth paying attention to who\u2019s pushing back on AI and what they\u2019re saying. He said he keeps his finger on the pulse by regularly interacting with Gen Z.<\/p>\n

When he surveys his students in NYU\u2019s publishing master\u2019s program on AI use, the results catch him off guard. Only about a third report using AI on a daily basis. The other two-thirds say they actively refuse to use it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a digital native generation that has grown up with iPads and cell phones and computers, and they are actively rebelling against a lot of that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This pushback goes beyond the classroom. Riegert said he sees the same hunger for authenticity showing up in consumer behavior across the board. He mentioned the recent popularity of vinyl records<\/a> as evidence that analog objects are making a comeback.<\/p>\n

\u201cA book or a vinyl record is now a luxury object because it is a symbol that you have the time to not be on a screen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

One of his students recently told him that he brings a book to bars because scrolling his phone makes him feel \u201clike an idiot,\u201d but sitting with a novel is more likely to spark meaningful conversation, plus it makes him seem \u201capproachable and cool.\u201d Riegert said this is representative of how many of his students think and act in the world, which includes how they\u2019re choosing to spend their money.<\/p>\n

However, it\u2019s not all retro sunshine and analog roses. The AI revolution is definitely real, and it\u2019s affecting the publishing industry in a big way despite some very vocal critics. The publishing exec said that AI is to nonfiction what cheap knockoffs are to Amazon, but at a massive scale.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are plenty of books that are doing very well in nonfiction categories, especially, and now in fiction, that have fake authors with AI-generated images, and the books are targeting well-established niches \u2014 and they are selling,\u201d Riegert said. \u201cIt does not seem like the consumer is put off by the fact that it is AI-generated, and it is going to have a very serious effect on the publishing industry and on human authors.\u201d<\/p>\n

The numbers bear it out. Publishers Weekly recently reported<\/a> that the total number of books entering the market jumped by one million titles year over year, a figure Riegert calls \u201cmind-blowing.\u201d Meanwhile, output from established Big Five publishers remained essentially flat. These books are mostly not coming from human beings. They\u2019re coming from AI-generated content saturating the market.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the irony Riegert keeps coming back to: The saturation that AI is creating may be what saves human publishing. He\u2019s already seeing it in his own marketing data. The slick, AI-generated book trailers and polished social content are no longer working as customers react more strongly to grassroots campaigns, or at least ones that feel that way.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe marketing angles that are working for us now are taking us back to the original ways that we would market a book,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is a shaky iPhone video of the author talking about their book. It is something that is very authentic. And if the video is too good, it is actually a detriment to the performance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Consumers are growing skeptical of reviews, rankings, and products that feel fake. Riegert sees it as a key driver behind the ongoing resurgence of Barnes & Noble under James Daunt and the broader indie bookstore revival. A handwritten staff recommendation carries more weight than 10,000 five-star reviews on Amazon because it\u2019s probably not the work of bots.<\/p>\n

Self-publishing dismantled the publishing industry, removing the barriers that aspiring authors once faced while trying to be heard. Now, those gates are open way too far. Riegert believes the industry is reverting to the way it was, at least partially.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that we\u2019re starting to get to this pivot point where the role of the gatekeeper and the critic is going to come back,\u201d he said. \u201cAt the end of the day, the most valuable thing that you have \u2014 and the thing that all of us media organizations are competing for \u2014 is your time. We\u2019re all entertainment companies at the end of the day, and we\u2019re fighting for your time. And if what we\u2019re peddling is not worth your time, then it\u2019s a big problem for us and for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now that AI is being heavily scrutinized, there\u2019s a chance Daunt will not end up stocking the shelves of Barnes & Noble with AI-generated books because the customers won\u2019t want to buy them. We can only hope. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article is part of\u00a0Upstream, The Daily Wire\u2019s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":716876,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,74],"class_list":["post-716875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/716876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}