KDP and AI: What Authors Need to Disclose (2026)

This is not legal advice. Amazon's policy has also changed more than once. Read the current KDP content guidelines before you upload. What follows is the shape of the rule as it stands, in plainer language than the help page uses.

Worth knowing before you read further: search this question and nearly every result belongs to a business with an AI writing product to sell. Ours included. Treat the primary source as the authority, not us.

The distinction the whole policy rests on

Amazon separates two things. Everything else follows from which side you are on.

That is the entire rule in one table. The word doing the work is created.

If you typed a prompt and a model produced prose that went into your book, that is AI-generated. Amazon asks you to say so. If you wrote the prose and used AI to suggest names, tighten a paragraph or catch a repeated word, that is AI-assisted. There is nothing to declare.

The part people get wrong

Heavy editing does not change the classification.

This is the single most common misreading. Writers generate a chapter, revise it extensively, decide it is now substantially theirs, then tick nothing. Amazon's position is that if a tool created the text, it stays AI-generated no matter how much you reworked it afterward.

You may disagree with where that line sits. It is still where the line sits.

It covers three separate categories. Text, images and translations are asked about individually. A hand-written novel with an AI-generated cover still involves a disclosure, for the image.

Translations count. A machine-translated edition is AI-generated content in that edition, even though a human wrote the original.

Where the question appears

At upload, on the Content Details page, which is the second step of the publishing flow. The question asks whether the content is AI-generated, with a checkbox to confirm, followed by a secondary question about which category applies.

You answer it for new titles and when updating existing ones.

The disclosure is reportedly informational. It is widely reported that the answer is not shown to customers and does not appear on your product page. That point is not on Amazon's content guidelines page itself, so treat it as reported rather than official.

What happens if you do not disclose

Failing to disclose is a terms violation. Reported consequences run from a title being blocked or removed through to account termination for repeat violations. Enforcement reportedly tightened through 2025 and 2026.

The asymmetry is worth sitting with. Disclosing costs you a checkbox that readers never see. Not disclosing risks the account holding all your books.

Where a co-writing workflow actually lands

This matters if you use a tool like ours, so I want to be precise rather than reassuring.

Clearly AI-assisted, nothing to declare:

• Brainstorming names, places or possible plot turns that you then write yourself

• Asking questions about your own manuscript

• Editing a line you wrote when you asked for a specific change

• Grammar, consistency and continuity checks

Clearly AI-generated, declare it:

• Drafting a scene from your outline and keeping that prose in the book

• Generating a cover image

• Machine-translating an edition

The honest middle: most people using an AI writing tool for a novel land in the second group for at least part of the book, because drafting is the point of the tool. That is fine. It is a checkbox, not a judgment. The mistake is deciding you are in the first group because you edited hard afterward.

If you are unsure which side a specific workflow sits on, the safer answer is to disclose. The cost of over-disclosing is nothing.

What this does not tell you

• Whether you own the copyright. Different question, different authority, more complicated answer. That is covered in the guides.

• What other retailers require. Apple Books, Kobo, Draft2Digital and Google Play each set their own terms.

• Whether AI content is allowed at all. It is, with disclosure. Policy on that could change.