Reader discovers paid book-review gig was quietly feeding him AI-generated books
Junior-Key-5043 · reddit · 2026-10-08
A Reddit user describes signing up for a paid book-reading gig whose terms already seemed odd: he was paid to read rather than review, told to be honest even if negative, and allowed to write a private essay instead of publishing — even though the books were already on sale.
After finding the first book strangely lifeless, he ran its PDF through AI detectors, which reported high confidence it was AI-generated. The book belongs to a series with positive, human-looking reviews on Amazon. He now suspects the project was really testing whether people can detect AI-written books — and that he unknowingly became a test subject.
He regrets writing a puff-piece review instead of calling out the lifeless details, worried it cost him higher-paying opportunities later.
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