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Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews

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Re: Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews

#71

Post by ilamont »

Search YouTube for ChatGPT and KDP (Amazon's self-publishing platform) and you'll see hundreds of videos that show how its done, often with ridiculous promises of thousands of dollars per month in "passive income." Some have even started using Midjourney for the covers or kids books illustrations. The YouTubers are often pumping expensive "masterclasses" to suckers looking to make an easy buck.

Amazon does not nothing to shut down the YouTubers or the grifters publishing these books. Anything that adds friction or requires human intervention - whether it's policies with teeth or staff to issue takedowns - reduces the bottom line.

Re: Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews

#74

Post by yamtaddle »

satellites wrote: post #52
tivert wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually a spin on an existing git-rich-quick scam ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biYciU1uiUw ). Version 1.0 had people hiring low cost ghostwriters for hundreds of dollars to bang out a book on some SEO topic. Now you use the same playbook with "AI," with far less upfront cost.

I fell for this once when I was a newer developer. I bought a book on my Kindle about Ruby on Rails, thinking it might be more insightful or accessible than the Rails docs. But every chapter was literally just copy/pasted from the Rails docs (which are free).

Like 3/4 of Amazon's listings for classic books are Print on Demand scams that exist to trick people buying books as gifts, who don't know what they're looking at and don't know to watch out for this sort of thing. Just Project Gutenberg text automatically sent to the printer, no manual typesetting or clean-up or any actual care put into it. They're just garbage, literally. Pure waste.

Re: Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews

#75

Post by timwaagh »

mkl95 wrote: post #14
ccleve wrote: post #12

All the books have approximately the same number of reviews. Is Amazon completely uninterested in dealing with fake reviews?

More positive reviews = more sales. They are not just uninterested in dealing with fake reviews, their algorithms reward products with positive reviews regardless of their authenticity. Of course if you report it, they eventually deal with it, as long as it is required by some law.

Not every e-commerce site agrees. I tried to review a book that I wasn't entirely happy with on bol.com recently. They told me I can only write reviews of books that I purchased there (ironically I bought it at a retailer that is part of the same holding). I ended up putting it on Amazon instead.

Re: Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews

#77

Post by hodgesrm »

vkou wrote: post #65
topkai22 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not a lawyer, but I really doubt it’d be illegal in the US at least. Just creating a book from ChatGPT is not against its terms of service, as “ OpenAI hereby assigns to you all its right, title and interest in and to Output. This means you can use Content for any purpose, including commercial purposes such as sale or publication, if you comply with these Terms.” What would be against the TOS is claiming that the…

> OpenAI hereby assigns to you all its right, title and interest in and to Output How can it do that? ChatGPT isn't capable of owning or assigning copyright, because only humans can produce copyrighted works (or enter into copyright assignment contracts - typical in employment contracts), and ChatGPT isn't human. It's giving you something that it doesn't own.

That's a standard phrase to make lawyers happy. It means what whatever else happens and whoever else may claim title to the work OpenAI won't come after you. They are free to put this in their terms of service; many companies will refuse to use it without such a disclaimer.

Where it gets entertaining is in Section 7. Indemnification; Disclaimer of Warranties; Limitations on Liability, which contains the following gem:

  (a) Indemnity. You will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless us, our
  affiliates, and our personnel, from and against any claims, losses, and 
  expenses (including attorneys’ fees) arising from or relating to your use 
  of the Services, including your Content, products or services you develop 
  or offer in connection with the Services, and your breach of these Terms 
  or violation of applicable law. [0]
Unlike normal Terms of Service where the vendor accepts liability and/or indemnifies the user against IP violations or other issues, this clause turns things around. If there's a problem you the user must mount a legal defense for OpenAI. By using Chat GPT you are enrolling in the legion of its defenders.

Who says contract law isn't fun?

[0] https://openai.com/policies/terms-of-use

Edit: pedantic wordsmithing

Re: Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews

#79

Post by cdelsolar »

gtirloni wrote: post #69
dahart wrote: post #11

This was an inevitable outcome of ChatGPT/LLMS, no? I expect to see a lot more of this by a lot of different people. I feel like a ton of the examples I’ve seen to date are effectively regurgitating Stack Overflow (sometimes verbatim!) and in a kind of abstract way, I feel like this is exactly the same as someone opportunistically publishing a bunch of auto-generated books… publishing a model trained on a bunch of we…

Even here on HN, people are using ChatGPT to write replies. You can spot it by the very verbose answers that don't say anything meaningful. Someone else commented here that AI would raise the noise level everywhere and I unfortunately have to agree.

[flagged]

Re: Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews

#80

Post by stonemetal12 »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #54
stonemetal12 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There maybe some need to legally clarify how much input is necessary for Tom to claim copyright. ChatGPT can't, legally speaking only humans are capable of claiming copyright. In the monkey selfie case a few years ago it was determined animals and machines can't claim copyright. In cases where there is no human author, the work is public domain.

Isn't there a difference between a monkey taking a picture (no human author involved) and a person using a tool (ChatGPT) to help them realise their original work? If I made a drawing with one of those old plastic spirograph tools I'd never wonder if the copyright was mine or the spirograph's.

Sure, even though photos are machine made, Humans claim copyright because they had artistic input on composition and framing. Between fully AI generated stuff, and human artistic input prompts causing output there is a line where the results go from copyrightable to not copyrightable. The question is where is that line, legally.

To me GPT is either very close to or already crosses that line.

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