Before AI they offered a lot of books which were just printed wikipedia articles.

However AI books massively increases the problem, because they can be created by the thousands, millions even, in seconds by any grifter out there, and there are a lot of grifters.

Any sort of argument of "it has always been bad" (and it has), are not very constructive, because the current situation enhances the shittification of the internet on a scale that was impossible before. It is an unprecedented situation.