63% of Religion Books on Amazon Are Likely AI-Written, Study Finds

AI detection company Originality.ai has found that 63% of paperback religion books on Amazon are likely written by AI, with the highest rates showing up in witchcraft, Hinduism and Taoism titles. Publishers Weekly reported on the study this week, and the numbers add up to another data point in a pattern that has been showing up across genre after genre on Amazon this year.

What the study looked at

Originality.ai scanned 2,034 English-language paperbacks across 14 religion and spirituality subcategories, all with at least a four-star average rating. Rather than judging a book by its cover, the team looked at three parts of each listing: the product summary, the author bio and a sample of the actual book text, with the in-book sample carrying the most weight in the final score. Any text that scored 50 or above on Originality.ai's detector was classified as "Likely AI." The scan covered the first six months of 2026.

Witchcraft and Hinduism titles are hit hardest

The rate of likely AI text was not even across subcategories. Witchcraft topped the list at 78% likely AI, followed by Hinduism at 76% and Taoism at 74%. At the other end, Satanism came in at 22%, atheism at 40% and Mormonism at 42%. The study's authors floated a theory for the gap: non-native English speakers may be using AI to reach English-language readers in categories where there is less established local competition, which would help explain why some of the least mainstream Western categories show the lowest AI use while some non-Western spiritual traditions show the highest.

The study also found a price and length gap. Books flagged as likely AI averaged $16.84 and 170 pages, while books flagged as likely human-written averaged $18.96 and 208 pages. Cheaper and shorter is not proof of anything on its own, but it lines up with what a rushed AI-assembled title tends to look like next to a book someone spent months writing.

Part of a wider pattern, not a one-off

This is not Originality.ai's first pass at a book category. The company previously reported that 77% of books in Amazon's "Success" self-help subgenre were likely AI-written, and ran a similar scan of herbal remedies titles. Fiction is not immune either. A separate study we covered found AI-heavy titles now take roughly a fifth of Amazon fiction sales, with revenue per book falling as volume rises. Put the studies side by side and a picture forms: wherever a book category is easy to enter and hard for a browsing reader to vet before buying, AI-generated volume tends to follow.

What this means for you as an author

If you write and publish in religion, spirituality or self-help, this is worth taking seriously even if you have never touched an AI tool yourself. A flooded category makes it harder for a genuine book to stand out in Amazon search and browse results, and it gives cautious readers one more reason to hesitate before buying from an author they do not already know. Reviews, a real author bio with a verifiable background, and sample pages that read like they came from one consistent voice all do more work for you now than they did a year ago.

It also means categories are not equally crowded. A subgenre sitting at 22% or 40% likely AI still has far less noise to cut through than one sitting at 74% or 78%. If you are choosing where to position a new title, that gap is worth a look before you pick a category.

None of this means AI has no place in a legitimate writing process. The difference readers and retailers are reacting to is volume without craft, not assistance itself. PageWriter Studio is built around that distinction: it drafts from a style profile trained on your own writing, so the tool speeds up your process without flattening your voice into the kind of generic prose a detector flags in seconds. If you want to see how that works on a book you are already writing, you can start a free trial.