Amazon KDP's AI disclosure rule, for books made with AI help, fits in one short section of its content guidelines. KDP sorts AI use into two kinds. Content an AI tool created is AI-generated, and you tell KDP about it when you publish. Content you created and then improved with AI is AI-assisted, and you don't. The line isn't about how much AI you used. It's about who made the words or the picture in the first place.
This guide sorts the common cases against KDP's own wording, explains why AI covers count, summarizes what the US Copyright Office says about AI and authorship, and shows where the AI features in Inkbound fall. It is a plain reading of public rules, not legal advice.
The short answer
Yes, you can sell a book written with AI help on Amazon. When you publish a new book, or edit and republish one, KDP asks you to tell it about AI-generated text, images or translations, and AI cover art counts. AI-assisted work needs no disclosure: content you created yourself and then edited or checked with AI, or wrote yourself from ideas you brainstormed with AI.
AI-generated vs AI-assisted, in KDP's terms
KDP's content guidelines define the two kinds by who created the content:
- AI-generated: text, images or translations created by an AI-based tool. If an AI tool made the actual content, KDP counts it as AI-generated, "even if you applied substantial edits afterwards." You must tell KDP about it.
- AI-assisted: content you created yourself, then edited, refined, checked for errors or otherwise improved with AI tools, in text or in images. Using AI to brainstorm and come up with ideas also counts as AI-assisted, as long as you then wrote the text or made the images yourself. You don't have to tell KDP about it.
Two details in that wording matter more than they first appear. First, the rule on images reaches past the pages: KDP counts your cover art as well as interior images and artwork. Second, editing doesn't change the category. A chapter an AI drafted is still AI-generated after you have rewritten half of it.
So the useful question is simple. Who made the first version of the words or the picture that ends up in the book? If you did, and AI helped you polish it, it's AI-assisted. If an AI tool did, it's AI-generated, whatever happened to it next.
One more line on KDP's page applies to everyone. You are responsible for checking that all of your content, AI-generated or AI-assisted, meets KDP's content guidelines, including other people's intellectual property rights. Disclosure doesn't replace that check.
Common cases, sorted
Here is how KDP's two definitions apply to the ways authors most often use AI. If your case isn't in the table, read KDP's page itself, and contact KDP if you're still unsure.
| How you used AI | KDP's category | Tell KDP? |
|---|---|---|
| You brainstormed plot ideas or character names with AI, then wrote the book yourself | AI-assisted | No |
| AI suggested an outline, and you wrote every chapter from it | AI-assisted | No |
| AI checked your draft for grammar, spelling and typos | AI-assisted | No |
| AI tightened or polished a paragraph you wrote | AI-assisted | No |
| AI drafted a scene or a chapter, and you kept it or edited it heavily | AI-generated | Yes |
| An AI image tool made your cover art | AI-generated | Yes |
| An AI image tool made illustrations or artwork inside the book | AI-generated | Yes |
| An AI tool translated the book, even if you corrected the translation | AI-generated | Yes |
| A typographic cover: your title and name set in type and color, with no AI image | Not AI | No |
| Cover art you painted, drew or photographed without AI | Not AI | No |
The polished paragraph is the row to watch. If the AI edited a paragraph you wrote, KDP calls that AI-assisted. If you asked it to write a new paragraph in place of yours, the new text is something an AI tool created, which KDP calls AI-generated. The same goes for a scene the AI continued from your last line: the continuation is its text, not yours.
AI book covers on KDP
It's easy to think of the cover as packaging rather than content. KDP doesn't. Its rule on AI-generated images names cover art alongside interior images and artwork, so if an AI image tool made any of your cover art, the book contains AI-generated content and you tell KDP when you publish.
That doesn't rule out a good cover. You have several ways to get one:
- A cover designer. Ask whether any AI tools went into the art, because you're the one who answers KDP's question.
- A premade cover. A finished design you buy and have your title set on. Ask the same question about AI before you buy.
- KDP Cover Creator. KDP's own no-cost cover tool, with templates and an image gallery. KDP's Cover Creator help says the tool, and covers made with its stock images, can't be downloaded for use outside the KDP website.
- Your own art or photo. Made without AI, there's nothing to disclose.
- A typographic cover. Title and author set in type over color, with no picture at all.
- An AI image tool. Then the cover is AI-generated, and you tell KDP when you publish.
Whichever route you take, a paperback cover has to match your book's size exactly: one full-wrap file with the back, spine and front, sized from your trim, page count and paper. Our KDP cover calculator gives the spine width and full cover size, and the KDP book cover size guide has every number. Inkbound's Cover lab can paint the wrap or set a typographic cover from your title; how each one counts is below.
When you tell KDP
KDP's guidelines say when: you inform KDP of AI-generated content when you publish a new book, and when you make edits to an existing book and republish it. So the rule follows your revisions. If a revision swaps in an AI-painted cover or adds a chapter an AI drafted, that is an edit and a republish, and the answer you gave the first time may no longer be true.
You don't need to tell KDP about AI-assisted content. KDP's guidelines say it isn't necessary to inform it of tools used that way.
The easiest way to answer accurately is to keep a short record as you work: which chapters, scenes or pages began as AI drafts, which images came from an AI tool, and whether any translation was machine-made. After a year of revisions, a note in your project folder is more reliable than memory.
KDP's rules are only KDP's. If you're also entering a contest, querying an agent or selling through another store, read their AI rules too. For where this sits in the whole upload, see our step-by-step guide to self-publishing a book on Amazon KDP.
Can you copyright a book written with AI?
This is a different question from KDP's, with a different authority. In the US, the main guidance comes from the US Copyright Office, the federal agency that administers copyright law. It published the part of its AI report on copyrightability on January 29, 2025. In short, the Office concluded that:
- Copyright protects original expression created by a human author, even when the work also includes AI-generated material.
- Material generated purely by AI isn't protected, and neither is material where a human had too little control over the expressive elements.
- Using AI as a tool to assist your creativity, rather than stand in for it, doesn't affect protection.
- With the technology generally available when the report was written, prompts alone don't give enough control.
- Your own work that can be seen in an AI output stays protectable, and so can your creative selection, coordination or arrangement of AI material, or your creative changes to it.
- Whether a human contribution is enough is decided case by case.
If you register a copyright, the Office's 2023 registration guidance says applicants have a duty to disclose AI-generated content in the work and should exclude any AI-generated content that is more than trivial from their claim.
Notice that the two systems sort things differently. For KDP, an AI draft you rewrote heavily is still AI-generated. For the Copyright Office, your creative changes to that draft may be yours to protect, while the AI's own material is not.
This is a short summary, not legal advice. For your own book, read the Office's full report, and talk to a copyright lawyer if a lot rides on the answer.
Is it OK to use AI to help write a book?
That is your call, and authors disagree about it. Some use AI the way they would use a thesaurus or a critique partner: to get unstuck, to test whether a middle chapter drags, or to catch typos before an editor sees the draft. Others won't use it at all, because of how the models were trained, because they want every sentence to be their own, or because their readers feel the same way. Serious writers hold both views.
What isn't up for debate is honesty. KDP asks a plain question, and a true answer is the floor. Beyond that, how much you tell your readers about the way you made the book is up to you.
How this works in Inkbound
Inkbound is a Mac app for writing, formatting and publishing a book, with an AI writing staff powered by Claude. Here is where each of its AI features falls in KDP's terms.
- Editors' suggestions on your own writing: AI-assisted. The Developmental Editor and the Line Editor read your book and tell you what they see, from pacing across the whole book to a clumsy sentence. When you make the change yourself to text you wrote, that is AI-assisted. Talking through what comes next with the Co-Writer, then writing the scene yourself, is AI-assisted too.
- Co-Writer text you apply: AI-generated. In the chat, a passage the Co-Writer drafts arrives as a card. Press Apply and it lands in your chapter, and from then on KDP counts it as AI-generated, however much you edit it. The same goes for a page the staff fills in, such as About the author, and for anything you copy out of the chat by hand.
- An AI Writer chapter: AI-generated. Ask the AI Writer for the next chapter and it reads your synopsis, your Story Bible and every chapter so far, then drafts about 1,200, 2,000 or 3,000 words straight into your book. It's a draft for you to edit, keep or delete, and it counts as AI-generated.
- A painted cover: AI-generated. The Cover lab's cover painter paints the back, spine and front as one image. That art is an AI-generated image in KDP's terms, and so is a new version you make with Change something.
- A typographic cover: not AI. Choose Typographic cover and Inkbound sets the colors, layout and type from your title, with no painted image. Shuffle style gives you another look, still without AI. Art you made without AI and import is not AI either.
Once it's in your chapter, AI text is ordinary text, the same as the words you typed. So keep your own note of what the staff drafted and where it went, and you'll have the answer ready when KDP asks. Inkbound makes the files and the listing, and you upload them and answer KDP's questions in your own KDP account. Our Terms say the same: following a store's rules about AI is the author's responsibility.
You can also keep AI out of the book entirely. Writing, formatting, a typographic cover set from your title and exporting your files use no AI credits, and the AI only reads your book when you start an AI action. The AI doesn't write the book for you. It drafts only what you ask for, as the AI staff page explains, and you keep the pen.
Drafting in a chat app instead? Our guide to using Claude for novel writing covers that workflow, and the same KDP rules apply to text you bring in from any AI tool.
KDP's rules checked on October 22, 2026, against its content guidelines and Cover Creator help. The copyright summary is from the US Copyright Office's Part 2 report and its 2023 registration guidance. KDP's guidelines can change, so read the current wording before you publish.