AI-generated book – A new investigation points to a whack-a-mole problem on Apple Books: fake, AI-generated versions of an author’s work have repeatedly appeared, been reported, and then returned—suggesting digital storefronts may struggle to stop impersonation once it starts.
For days, Joanna Stern thought the problem was handled. She’d reported fake, AI-generated copies of her book on Apple Books—book listings that copied her name and mimicked the cover art and descriptions closely enough to look legitimate. Then the listings disappeared.
And then they came back.
In a recent YouTube Shorts video. Stern—discussing what she found on Apple’s digital bookstore—said the fraud wasn’t a one-time upload. She described how multiple AI-generated books impersonating her work repeatedly surfaced on Apple Books even after they were removed. forcing her and others to go back through the same cycle again and again.
What makes the issue so unsettling isn’t just that knockoffs exist. Stern said the fake titles weren’t sloppy—she claimed they copied her name, tracked the look of the original cover, and carried descriptions that made the listings believable to unwitting readers.
AppleBooks removing a listing, then seeing new ones appear quickly in its place, turns the situation into something closer to digital whack-a-mole. Stern’s account suggests that taking down one set of fraudulent books doesn’t stop the next batch from being uploaded just as easily.
The pressure here isn’t isolated to Apple. Stern also pointed to the broader pattern playing out across online storefronts. She said the issue isn’t unique to Apple Books, with Amazon’s Kindle Store having struggled with similar AI-generated knockoffs over the past year.
The uncomfortable through-line is that generative AI has lowered the effort required to mass-produce convincing imitations. Digital bookstores. built on the idea that publishing should be accessible. suddenly have to defend that openness from bad actors flooding marketplaces with low-quality or outright fraudulent content.
The sequence of events—impersonation, removal, and rapid return—lands readers in a different kind of uncertainty. If storefronts can’t reliably prevent these listings from reappearing. the promise of browsing an author’s work turns into a question: is the book you’re about to buy actually written by the person on the cover—or is it generated by a system trying to profit from someone else’s identity?.
Apple Books Joanna Stern AI-generated books knockoffs digital storefronts Kindle Store fraud generative AI author impersonation