Amazon KDP requires every author to declare whether their book contains AI-generated text, images, or translations. The form appears on the Content tab during publishing and has three independent dropdown fields; each one covers a different category and must be set separately. Selecting “None” across all three is perfectly valid when no AI tool created any part of the manuscript. This KDP AI disclosure is internal to Amazon and does not appear on your book’s product page.
- What Counts as AI-Generated vs AI-Assisted on KDP?
- How Do the Three AI Disclosure Dropdown Fields Work?
- Does Kindle Translate Count as AI-Generated Content?
- Which Edge Cases Trip Authors Up Most Often?
- Do You Need to Update AI Disclosure on Existing Books?
- What Happens If You Get the Disclosure Wrong?
- Frequently Asked Questions
What Counts as AI-Generated vs AI-Assisted on KDP?
AI-generated content is any text, image, or translation that was initially created by an AI tool, even if you edited it heavily afterward. AI-assisted content is work you created yourself and then refined using AI tools. Only AI-generated content requires disclosure; AI-assisted does not.
Amazon’s Content Guidelines draw the line clearly. If you used an AI tool to produce the first draft of a chapter, that chapter is AI-generated regardless of how much you rewrote it later. If you wrote the chapter yourself and then ran it through a grammar checker or used AI to suggest better phrasing, that is AI-assisted and does not need to be declared.
Common AI-assisted tools that do not trigger disclosure include grammar and style checkers (Grammarly, ProWritingAid), AI-powered spell checkers built into word processors, brainstorming tools used for outlining or idea generation (provided you wrote the final text yourself), and readability analysers. The key question is always: who produced the first version of the words or pixels that ended up in the book? If an AI tool did, disclose. If you did, no disclosure is needed.
One pattern that trips up authors at ebookpbook is the “extensive rewrite” scenario. An author generates a first draft with ChatGPT, then rewrites 80% of it. Because the AI produced the initial text, this still counts as AI-generated under Amazon’s definition. The amount of subsequent human editing does not change the classification.
How Do the Three AI Disclosure Dropdown Fields Work?
The AI-Generated Content section on KDP’s Content tab presents a single yes/no question: “Did you use AI tools in creating texts, images, and/or translations in your book?” Selecting “Yes” reveals three independent dropdown menus, one for each category.
The Texts dropdown offers five options: None; Some sections, with minimal or no editing; Some sections, with extensive editing; Entire work, with minimal or no editing; Entire work, with extensive editing. The Images dropdown covers interior images, illustrations, and cover art with parallel options: None; One or a few AI-generated images, with minimal or no editing; One or a few AI-generated images, with extensive editing; Many AI-generated images, with minimal or no editing; Many AI-generated images, with extensive editing. The Translations dropdown mirrors the text options: None through Entire work with extensive editing.
Each dropdown is independent. A book might have AI-generated cover art (requiring an Images selection), entirely human-written text (Texts set to None), and no translations (Translations set to None). You set each category based on what actually applies to your specific book. The same form appears on both the Kindle eBook Content tab and the Paperback Content tab, so you fill it out twice if you are publishing both formats.
The scope options (“some sections” vs “entire work” and “minimal” vs “extensive” editing) do not currently affect your book’s visibility, royalty rate, or KDP Select eligibility. Amazon has not publicly stated how these granular selections are used beyond internal compliance tracking.
Does Kindle Translate Count as AI-Generated Content?
Yes. Kindle Translate, Amazon’s own beta translation service available within the KDP dashboard, produces AI-generated translations that must be disclosed. This is explicitly covered in KDP’s Kindle Translate documentation. When you use Kindle Translate to create a translated edition of your book, you must select the appropriate option in the Translations dropdown.
This catches many authors off guard. Because Kindle Translate is Amazon’s own tool, integrated directly into the KDP publishing workflow, some authors assume it is exempt from disclosure. It is not. Any machine translation service (Kindle Translate, Google Translate, DeepL, or others) that produces the initial translated text qualifies as AI-generated, regardless of how much you edit the output.
An author who writes a novel in English and uses Kindle Translate to produce a Spanish edition would set Translations to “Entire work, with extensive editing” (if they reviewed and corrected the output) or “Entire work, with minimal or no editing” (if they published the raw translation). The Texts dropdown would remain “None” because the original English text was human-written.
Which Edge Cases Trip Authors Up Most Often?
The three-category structure creates edge cases that are not immediately obvious from the form itself. Here are the scenarios that cause the most confusion.
AI-Generated Cover Art
If you used Midjourney, DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, or any other AI image generator to create your book cover, you must select the appropriate option in the Images dropdown. This applies even if you extensively edited the AI output in Photoshop or Canva afterward. Interior illustrations and diagrams follow the same rule. A book with one AI-generated cover image and no other AI images would select “One or a few AI-generated images, with extensive editing” (assuming the author edited the output).
AI-Generated Book Descriptions and Blurbs
Amazon’s AI disclosure form specifically covers the content of your book (the manuscript and its images), not the metadata fields you fill in on the Book Details page. Your book description, subtitle, and keywords are metadata. As of 2026, there is no separate disclosure requirement for AI-generated metadata. However, this is a grey area that Amazon could clarify at any time, and your book description must still comply with all other Content Guidelines regardless of how it was produced.
Stock Images Created with AI
If you purchased stock images from a provider and those images were AI-generated, you are still responsible for disclosing them. The disclosure obligation follows the content, not the creator. This is an area where many authors are unknowingly non-compliant, because stock photo libraries increasingly include AI-generated images without always making the distinction clear.
Mixed Workflows
Many authors use a mix of AI and human effort. An author might write 90% of a non-fiction book themselves but use ChatGPT to draft a technical appendix. In this case, the correct Texts selection is “Some sections, with minimal or no editing” or “Some sections, with extensive editing,” depending on how much the AI-generated appendix was reworked. The presence of any AI-generated text, even a single section, triggers the disclosure.
Do You Need to Update AI Disclosure on Existing Books?
You only need to address the AI disclosure when you publish a new book or when you edit and republish an existing book. If you have a book that has been live on KDP since before the AI disclosure requirement was introduced and you have not touched it since, there is no retroactive obligation to go back and add a disclosure.
The moment you update your book on Amazon after publishing (uploading a revised manuscript, changing the cover, or modifying content details that trigger a re-review), the AI disclosure form appears and you must fill it out accurately for the current state of your book. This means that if your original edition contained no AI content but your revised edition includes AI-generated cover art, you would need to declare it at that point.
For authors managing a book series on Amazon KDP, each title in the series has its own AI disclosure. If one book in the series used an AI-translated edition and the others did not, only the translated title needs the Translations disclosure set.
What Happens If You Get the Disclosure Wrong?
Amazon uses a combination of automated detection and human review to enforce its AI disclosure policy. The consequences of failing to disclose AI-generated content include book removal without prior warning, account suspension for repeat violations, withholding of pending royalties if a book is removed, and difficulty republishing a removed title even after adding the correct disclosure.
Importantly, disclosing AI-generated content does not penalise your book. There is no evidence that books carrying the AI disclosure label receive lower rankings, reduced visibility, or different royalty treatment compared to books without it. The disclosure is an internal compliance mechanism, not a consumer-facing label. Readers cannot see whether you selected “Yes” or “No” on the AI disclosure form.
The risk is entirely asymmetric: disclosing when you did not strictly need to carries no downside, while failing to disclose when you should have can result in removal. When in doubt, disclose. If your book includes images in your Kindle ebook that may have been AI-generated (for instance, stock images of uncertain provenance), it is safer to declare them than to leave the Images dropdown on “None.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Does using Grammarly or ProWritingAid require KDP AI disclosure?
No. Grammar checkers, style editors, and readability tools are considered AI-assisted, not AI-generated. You wrote the content; the tool refined it. Amazon’s Content Guidelines explicitly exclude this type of use from the disclosure requirement.
Is the KDP AI disclosure visible to readers on my book’s Amazon page?
No. The AI-Generated Content form on the KDP Content tab is internal to Amazon. Your responses are not displayed on the product detail page, in the book description, or anywhere that customers can see them. Disclosing AI use does not add any label or badge to your listing.
Do I need to fill out the AI disclosure separately for my ebook and paperback?
Yes. The AI-Generated Content section appears on the Content tab for both the Kindle eBook and the Paperback (or Hardcover) publishing workflows. You must complete it for each format individually, because the AI content in each format may differ (for example, an ebook might have different interior images than its print counterpart).
What if I used AI to generate ideas but wrote all the final text myself?
That is AI-assisted, not AI-generated. If you used ChatGPT to brainstorm chapter outlines, generate topic ideas, or suggest structural approaches, but you wrote every sentence of the final manuscript yourself, no disclosure is required. The distinction hinges on who produced the text that actually appears in the published book.
Can Amazon detect AI-generated content if I do not disclose it?
Amazon has stated it uses automated detection systems alongside human reviewers, and enforcement has reportedly intensified through 2025 and 2026. While no detection system is perfect, the risk of non-disclosure resulting in account action is real and growing. Given that disclosure carries no penalty, there is no practical reason to withhold it.
