AI-Generated Books of Nonsense Are All Over Amazon's Bestseller Lists

[highplainsdem]

https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7b774/ai-generated-books-of-nonsense-are-all-over-amazons-bestseller-lists

Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited young adult romance bestseller list was filled with dozens of AI-generated books of nonsense on Monday and Tuesday. As of Wednesday morning, Amazon appeared to have taken action against the books, but the episode shows that people are spamming AI-generated nonsense to the platform and are finding a way to monetize it.

“The AI bots have broken Amazon,” wrote Caitlyn Lynch, an indie author, in a Tweet on Monday. “Take a look at the Best Sellers in Teen & Young Adult Contemporary Romance eBooks top 100 chart. I can see 19 actual legit books. The rest are AI nonsense clearly there to click farm.” Motherboard viewed dozens of clearly AI-generated books Tuesday afternoon; by Wednesday, the vast majority of them had fallen off of the bestseller list but were still available to buy on the platform.

Select titles include: When the three attacks, Apricot bar code architecture, The journey to becoming enlightened is arduous, Department of Vinh Du Stands in Front of His Parents’ Tombstone, The God Tu mutters, Ma La Er snorted scornfully, Jessica's Attention, etc.

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“This will absolutely be the death knell for [Kindle Unlimited] if Amazon cannot kill this off. The KENP payout will halve and writers will pull their books in droves,” Lynch continued in a thread, referring to the payout that publishing writers get based on how many pages of their book were read by Kindle users. If AI-generated nonsense books were those with the farthest reach, then Kindle writers’ income would steeply drop. “I honestly thought Amazon had a handle on the click farms. CLEARLY NOT.”

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I first started focusing on the harm generative AI can do just over 6 months ago, when I saw an article about a Kindle novelist using AI: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217495259 . She and others who thought AI might help writers are now seeing what it will do instead. And of course we're now in the middle of a screenwriters' strike partly about producers and studios wanting to be able to use AI to replace writers.


Image of some of this garbage, from a tweet about this:

[dalton99a]

1. Kick

[JanMichael]

2. It starts with people using AI to create garbage for $$$.

Not sure how it's going to end though.

Right now the AI produces something that usually needs to be edited by a human. Next year? Next month? Who knows. I'm beginning to think some of the shows on Netflix are AI based meaning it came up with the plot and then some human writers may have cleaned them up.

[BComplex]

3. The AI bots also sold some vitamins I purchased.

Last edited Sat Jul 1, 2023, 11:13 AM - Edit history (1)

It had 23,000+ great reviews. The vitamins made me extremely sick. I went back to review what had been written, and there were now only 53 reviews by actual people, and I'm not totally sure they were valid. Amazon had figured it out and pulled the reviews.

Folks, this is dangerous as hell in some instances.

I'm going to start buying my purchases directly from the companies. If enough people do that, maybe Amazon will force the congress to do something about AI.

[Shermann]

4. It's barely different from the stream of shoddily manufactured merchandise up there nt

[patphil]

5. For each good, beneficial use of AI, there's going to be several harmful/deceitful ones.

Greed and the need for power will drive the growth of AI.
It's magically malicious!

[FakeNoose]

6. Amazon has to control this - it's gotten WAY out of hand!

My personal solution is to never buy books from Amazon, but that's just me.

For anyone who really wants to buy books from Amazon, I'd suggest that you carefully look over not only the Kindle listings, but also the hardcover (and softcover) listings for the same book. If the book only exists as a Kindle e-book and not printed, then I would be very suspicious of its origin.

If we all start boycotting Amazon, or at least only buy printed books and not digital versions, then I think Amazon will do something about the proliferation of bot-fakes.

[cbabe]

7. Consider

https://bookshop.org
Bookshop: Buy books online. Support local bookstores.

Support local bookstores. $26,576,964.81 raised for local bookstores

(Percentage of sale price goes to your designated local bookstore.)

[BannonsLiver]

8. "Focusing" is an interesting word choice.