Scammy AI-Generated Books Are Flooding Amazon • Hacker News Board

Re: Scammy AI-Generated Books Are Flooding Amazon

#41

Post by argiopetech » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 4:48 PM UTC

riley333 wrote: post #35

There are so many reasons why this is happening and I personally think it's only tangentially related to AI. The internet has now become the home of "hustle culture" and is no longer serving the purpose of why it was first created. Covid only accelerated this trend as people began to look for other ways to generate income online. Just look at the Gamestop and AMC amateur stock trading craze or the explosion of flippi…

If I'm the kinda guy who's into the hustle, and I can hustle $800/mo (or similar) out of the government with no effort, a) why wouldn't I also keep up my other hustles, and, b) why do you expect that the cost of living won't rise to meet there new level of basic income?

Re: Scammy AI-Generated Books Are Flooding Amazon

#42

Post by drakonka » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 4:50 PM UTC

dorkwood wrote: post #19

How do we know these books are AI generated? Because the startup "Reality Defender" said so? This feels like they're deliberately singling out trash books and calling them AI-generated to fit their bias. It doesn't seem fair, since the AI content I've generated myself has been better than any book I've ever read. In fact, it's inspired me to generate my first book, which I'll be publishing soon.

There was a flood of low-quality fully-human-produced books before and now there's an additional flood of low-quality AI-produced books, and for anyone with a little bit of experience with reading indie books _or_ self-publishing them, the AI books are extremely easy to spot.

If you're generating AI content that's better than any book you've ever read, in the _current_ state of what's available, I'd suggest reading some different books.

I believe we'll find a balance, as with anything. There will always be people publishing junk, including AI-generated junk. But many authors will learn to use AI to supplement their work and produce a high-quality product.

Re: Scammy AI-Generated Books Are Flooding Amazon

#43

Post by akeck » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 4:59 PM UTC

This may end up pushing Amazon into a pay-to-play model for publishing. :-/

Re: Scammy AI-Generated Books Are Flooding Amazon

#44

Post by tivert » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 5:00 PM UTC

lxgr wrote: post #8

Not just books. I remember seeing a "movie" on Amazon (not sure if it was Prime or some other service I was subscribed to). It was called "how to pronounce 'Stranger Things'", and the total length was about 10 seconds. I'll leave the plot to your imagination.

> Not just books. I remember seeing a "movie" on Amazon (not sure if it was Prime or some other service I was subscribed to). It was called "how to pronounce 'Stranger Things'", and the total length was about 10 seconds. I'll leave the plot to your imagination.

That's a really common genre of video on Youtube. If you Google "how to pronounce 'Stranger Things'", you'll find dozens, including this channel with separate videos for "How to pronounce Stranger Things" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZygvdKNT15o) AND "How to pronounce Stranger Things 3" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD4Zae1rOgY).

Re: Scammy AI-Generated Books Are Flooding Amazon

#45

Post by tivert » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 5:07 PM UTC

nerdjon wrote: post #9

spookybones wrote: post #5

Youtube is becoming flooded with influencers showing you how to do it and promising massive imaginary profits. Same for AI generated Etsy designs, copywriting gigs, and various other things.

Not just YouTube, but every social media platform seems to be spammed by it. I feel like I am seeing these stupid ads almost every hour now. A ton of people jumping on the bandwagon promising insane profits from AI. But if you thought for more than 1 second, if they themselves could make this much profit why would they be trying to convince other people to do it. The reality is they are likely the ones making any mon…

> But if you thought for more than 1 second, if they themselves could make this much profit why would they be trying to convince other people to do it.

Often times this stuff is scams that stopped working, so the scammers pivot to selling the non-working scam to others.

There was a YouTube video a couple years ago that exposed the scam of a couple of twins that were selling SEO'd bottom-of-the-barrel ghostwritten books on Amazon. Instead of using generative AI, they used the cheapest possible online ghostwriters. Apparently Amazon got wise and banned them, so they pivoted to selling their "system."

Edit: here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biYciU1uiUw "Contrepreneurs: The Mikkelsen Twins"

Re: Scammy AI-Generated Books Are Flooding Amazon

#46

Post by FiddlerClamp » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 5:09 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #30

dorkwood wrote: post #19

How do we know these books are AI generated? Because the startup "Reality Defender" said so? This feels like they're deliberately singling out trash books and calling them AI-generated to fit their bias. It doesn't seem fair, since the AI content I've generated myself has been better than any book I've ever read. In fact, it's inspired me to generate my first book, which I'll be publishing soon.

3.5 has, or had, a particular style. No matter what the story, it had a cheerily up-beat ending. The invading aliens learned the errors of their ways and then everyone celebrated. Dracula, Winnie-the-Pooh, and Sherlock teamed up to fight crime. 4 is somewhat more interesting, and I've seen worse from actual humans, but… roll a d6, and on a 1-5 it's terrible, roll a 6 and you get something that's 90% fantastic and 10%…

It's got no dialog, no characters, no real scenes. It's a summary of a plot, not a story.

Re: Scammy AI-Generated Books Are Flooding Amazon

#47

Post by infecto » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 5:10 PM UTC

nsypteras wrote: post #20

I'm pretty sure the ads displayed on my Kindle are all for AI generated children's books lately. It's actually kind of fun looking at them to find the AI generated artifacts (e.g little girl building snowman has three fingers, etc.) Not sure who's actually buying these things...

I would be curious the age range for the book in question or the type. I am bifurcating books with illustrations and novels (pure text), not sure if thats the best terms but I hope it gets the idea across.

Even pre-AI lots of childrens book at the lower age range/illustration category are basically low effort junk, this is generally true for most/all books for new children. They use illustrations bought wholesales and copy and paste text into them.

Re: Scammy AI-Generated Books Are Flooding Amazon

#48

Post by TylerE » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 5:17 PM UTC

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #12

lxgr wrote: post #8

Not just books. I remember seeing a "movie" on Amazon (not sure if it was Prime or some other service I was subscribed to). It was called "how to pronounce 'Stranger Things'", and the total length was about 10 seconds. I'll leave the plot to your imagination.

Noticed a trend on Amazon Prime where movies are allowed to have inaccurate dates. So it'll say (2023) but the second it starts you can tell it's 90s, 00s or even 70s. Really damages the perceived quality of the service when it can be gamed like that.

I suspect what's happened there is the content provider has improperly filled out the metadata. Usually when something like that happens it's because they've set the release date to whenever it came out on $dominant_format (i.e. Bluray)

Re: Scammy AI-Generated Books Are Flooding Amazon

#49

Post by staticman2 » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 5:18 PM UTC

dorkwood wrote: post #19

How do we know these books are AI generated? Because the startup "Reality Defender" said so? This feels like they're deliberately singling out trash books and calling them AI-generated to fit their bias. It doesn't seem fair, since the AI content I've generated myself has been better than any book I've ever read. In fact, it's inspired me to generate my first book, which I'll be publishing soon.

>>>"...since the AI content I've generated myself has been better than any book I've ever read."

With all due respect, you're probably kidding yourself about the quality of your AI generated book.

Re: Scammy AI-Generated Books Are Flooding Amazon

#50

Post by empath-nirvana » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 5:20 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #31

dorkwood wrote: post #19

How do we know these books are AI generated? Because the startup "Reality Defender" said so? This feels like they're deliberately singling out trash books and calling them AI-generated to fit their bias. It doesn't seem fair, since the AI content I've generated myself has been better than any book I've ever read. In fact, it's inspired me to generate my first book, which I'll be publishing soon.

Since you are working in the space maybe you probably know more about this than most of us. Are there any AI generated books out there that have found an audience and built a fan base? I don't doubt that it's going to happen but I'm skeptical if we are all that close. There are some very successful authors out there that many would say are awful, so that's why I asked for books with a fan base rather than good books.

Every once in a while I'll start a session with the AI where I'll just sort of interactively make a story with it and I quite enjoy the process, but the end result is not generally very good as a story.