AI translation on Kindle: what Amazon requires you to disclose

If you are publishing a translated book on Kindle, Amazon wants to know how the translation was produced. The rule is easy to state and harder to apply: a translation produced by an AI tool is "AI-generated" and must be disclosed, even if you edited it heavily afterwards. A translation written by a person, with an AI tool helping to improve it, counts as "AI-assisted" and needs no disclosure. The line is drawn at who produced the first text, not at how much work followed.

How Amazon defines AI-generated content

The KDP (Amazon's self-publishing platform) content guidelines separate two categories. AI-generated content is defined as text, images or translations created by an AI-based tool — and the definition explicitly survives later editing: it applies "even if you applied substantial edits afterwards". Deep revision does not move a text out of the category.

Content you created yourself, where AI tools were used to edit, refine, error-check or otherwise improve it, is defined as AI-assisted, and Amazon states you are not required to disclose it. Both sentences sit on the same page, and the distinction between them is the whole story.

Why translation is named explicitly

Many independent publishers miss this, because they picture "AI-generated content" as text written from nothing. Amazon lists translations alongside text and images. A book written entirely by a person and then translated with an AI tool is a book containing AI-generated content, for disclosure purposes.

That matters for hybrid workflows too. A machine first draft revised by a human translator is still an AI-generated translation under the written definition. A translator who wrote the text themselves and used an AI tool to catch inconsistent terminology sits on the other side of the line.

What this means in practice

Three practical consequences. First, record who produced the first draft in each language, while you still remember — a year later, when you update the book, you will not. Second, choosing a translation method is also a small compliance decision, so make it deliberately rather than in hindsight. Third, disclosure is not a penalty and not a label shown to readers on the product page; it is information handed to Amazon during upload.

Note also that the requirement covers updates, not only first publication. If you released a book in one language and added another edition a year later, you pass through the same step again.

What you do not need to disclose

Supporting work that never reaches the book is outside the requirement. Using an AI tool to draft marketing copy for yourself, summarise a chapter for your own use, build a schedule or look up terminology is not content appearing in the book. The line falls where you would expect it: whether the text the tool produced ended up on the pages.

If you are weighing human translation, machine translation and the mix between them, our comparison of a human translator versus AI goes deeper, and the FAQ page answers the questions that come up most often.

Primary source: Amazon KDP content guidelines.