The existence of someone buying AI slop and being okay with it isn't the same as losing to a robot. Unless you mean losing that specific sale, but they're not outselling human authors yet, and it's not clear they will until their quality improves immensely.

I do mean losing that specific sale. I’m also referring to the economists who saw an increase in sales.

This means there are marginal readers who previously didn’t buy any book but now buy AI slop books, or buy slop books in addition to human ones.