AI and the Quantity and Quality of Creative Products: Have LLMs Boosted Creation of Valuable Books?
- Sponsor
- Department of Economics
- Speaker
- Joel Waldfogel (University of Minnesota)
- econ@illinois.edu
- Views
- 20
- Originating Calendar
- Microeconomics (SEMINARS)
The paper to be presented is the joint work with Imke Reimers. (Cornell)
Abstract: The arrival of LLMs has facilitated increased creation of new books. As LLMs have diffused between 2022 and 2025, the number of new books appearing for sale each month at Amazon nearly tripled. We develop a ratings-based usage measure that is comparable across book release vintages, and we find that the vintages from the AI influx period have lower average quality. Yet the top 1,000 monthly releases per category -- albeit not the top 100 -- have higher quality than before; and the effect is larger in categories with faster growth in new titles. A nested logit calibration shows that LLM-enhanced book production could, in steady state, double the surplus that consumers derived from book markets. The advent of LLMs does not displace incumbent author activity; instead, it raises their productivity.