AI-Generated Books About Charlie Kirk's Death Started Popping up Online Immediately

The death of Charlie Kirk and the various theories and speculation that have emerged around it have been an all-consuming news story over the past few days. Kirk, a right-wing firebrand, was shot and killed while debating at Utah Valley University, and the story has received extensive coverage in the time since.

What was a little more surprising, though, was the news that a book, The Shooting of Charlie Kirk, had already been released and was now for sale on Amazon. Now, many want to know what the deal is with that book, and whether its author, Anastasia Casey, is a real person. Here's what we know.

If you have any notion of how the publishing industry works, and even if you don't, you probably can guess that it's not actually possible to write a book and get it published in less than two days. What's more, the book apparently purported to have been published on Sept. 9, the day before Kirk was shot, per screenshots circulating on X (formerly known as Twitter).

Obviously, the book could not have been written before the event happened, and it's also not possible that the book is actually a comprehensive account of his shooting, as there are plenty of details still emerging about who the killer was and exactly what happened.

The author of the book is apparently Anastasia J. Casey, but there's no information about this person on the internet that predates the news about this book.

Many people have naturally begun to assume, then, that the book is either a total scam, or that someone asked Chat GPT or another AI service to quickly write a short book on the shooting of Charlie Kirk in the aftermath of the event so that they could sell it online.

That trick doesn't seem to have worked, as Amazon has taken the page with the book down, likely because it was flagged so many times online.

"OK, this is WILD. I spent the 7 bucks so you don’t have to," one person wrote on X, explaining that they had bought the book. "The Shooting of Charlie Kirk Anastasia J Casey, published a DAY before the event, on Sept. 9, 2025. Please take a look at these two pages. Most of the 'book' is true about the setting, the shot, etc., and then it goes off course of the true events of yesterday and Charlie lives."

It seems, then, like the AI answer is mostly likely the correct one. The AI probably started by reciting all the correct information that it had, but it turned out that that wasn't enough information to cover an entire book, so then it veered off into hallucination in order to meet the word count required to write a whole book.

Thankfully, Amazon seems to have realized that this book isn't real, but it's an important reminder that AI-generated books are going to be part of the information ecosystem moving forward, and not everything in them is going to be accurate.