OpenAI’s ChatGPT drives surge in AI-generated content across books, lawsuits, and science

Since ChatGPT debuted on November 30, 2022, something has shifted in the way the world produces written material. Weekly English-language e-book publications on Amazon have nearly tripled, more than half of new books published by the end of 2025 included AI-generated text, and parallel spikes are showing up in self-filed lawsuits and scientific papers.

A Washington Post analysis tracks the phenomenon across multiple domains, painting a picture of an internet increasingly saturated with machine-assisted prose. A study from the National Bureau of Economic Research confirms what many suspected: the rate of publication and content generation surged dramatically after OpenAI flipped the switch on its chatbot.

The numbers tell the story

By the end of 2025, more than half of newly published books contained AI-generated text.

This isn’t limited to fiction or self-help titles flooding Kindle Unlimited. The legal system is feeling it too. Self-filed lawsuits, the kind where individuals represent themselves without attorneys, show a clear uptick in language patterns consistent with AI assistance.

Scientific papers are following the same trajectory. Academic publishing, already under pressure from a “publish or perish” culture, now faces an additional layer of complexity. Researchers are using AI tools to draft, edit, and in some cases substantially generate their manuscripts.

Quality versus quantity

Growing concerns about originality and quality are surfacing in both academic and legal circles. When a self-represented litigant submits a brief peppered with confident-sounding but fabricated case citations, that wastes judicial resources and can derail real legal proceedings.

Copyright litigation against OpenAI has been ongoing since 2023, with authors, publishers, and content creators arguing that the models were trained on their work without permission. No major resolutions have emerged from those cases yet.

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