The presence of AI-generated books is on the rise in online bookstores

The presence of AI-generated books is on the rise in online bookstores The presence of AI-generated books is on the rise in online bookstores.

on Aug 17, 2023

The book market is facing new challenges from generative AI technology, which is causing issues such as spamming of online bookstores with AI-generated pseudo-books and authors seeking to prevent unauthorized use of their work by AI firms.

According to The New York Times, AI-generated titles are infiltrating various categories of books such as cooking, programming, gardening, business, crafts, medicine, religion, mathematics, self-help, and novels. Travel guides have also been affected by this trend. It can be challenging for buyers to distinguish AI-generated titles from human-written products, and reader reviews are becoming unreliable with AI-generated posts intended to skew the ratings.

Publishing expert Jane Friedman recently discovered fake books claiming to be written by her and using her name, likely generated by AI. Amazon responded to her protests by asking if she had trademarked her name, but later removed the book listings. Friedman questions how smaller authors will cope with this issue.

The AI boom has made book-related data valuable to AI developers, but also a target of suspicion for creators. Benji Smith's project, Prosecraft, provided statistical analysis of published books, including snippets of their texts, but it was taken down due to fears that its contents might be used for AI training.

AI job-market worries are just one of many waves of change. KKR's Ted Oberwager believes AI can empower editors and creators, but the author remains at the center of the business model. Pollution of virtual bookshelves poses a threat to AI training data, as spurious AI-generated content is hard to weed out and can cause large language models to deteriorate.