I recently discovered a new AI-driven phenomenon: AI-driven YouTube channels that crank out summaries of bestselling books. Since I have a Google Alert set for “Blitzscaling,” I get notified when Google finds new Blitzscaling-related content. A couple of days ago, I received an alert about a new video:

It’s trivial now to set up a AI workflow that, given the title of a best-selling book, generates a summary of that book, creates an audio summary using an AI voice generator, grabs an image of that book’s cover, and puts it all together into a video that it then uploads to YouTube. Once you set up the workflow, all you need to do is input the titles. Or perhaps you even use AI for that! “Please create a list of the 500 best-selling non-fiction books of the 21st century.”

Here are two examples of such YouTube channels:

• Have You Read It: https://www.youtube.com/@hyri24
• 5-Minute Book Summary: https://www.youtube.com/@BookSummaryFive

My instinctive reaction was negative, which may not be the rational reaction. After all, there has long been a thriving book summary business, with players like GetAbstract and Blinkist; most of them had started making audio summaries available as well. And I generally subscribe to the principle that any publicity is good publicity; people who like a summary might buy the book. Those for whom the summary alone is sufficient would likely never have bought anyway. But I think the emotional response is worth investigating.

Upon further reflection, I think my negative reaction is a reflection of the broader implications. When it is free and easy to create derivative content, it mean that content mills like the ones I listed above will likely proliferate. Their goal is simply to “flood the zone” and build up an audience via the YouTube algorithm. If you thought user-generated content (UGC) was prolific, wait unti AI-generated content (AGC) takes over every platform and channel. Even if it is mediocre, its sheer volume will make truly good and original content even more of a needle in a haystack.

And since the answer to any AI-driven problem is generally more AI, I forsee a world where we use our personal AI agents to scour the internet and surface the “best” content.

In the long run, the problem might be self-correcting. As Syndrome put it in “The Incredibles,” “When everyone’s super, no one will be.” There will be no point in publishing the umpteenth AI summary of Blitzscaling because the audience (and more importantly, the algorithm) will simply ignore it. The only one watching will be authors like me who have Google Alerts set! But things will certainly be bumpy along the way.

What do you think? Are AI-generated book summaries a good thing or bad thing for authors? And if they are a bad thing, what should I do about it?