AI-written fake biographies are spreading on Amazon via self-publishing

In short: Amazon is being flooded with low-quality biographies and “summary” books that appear to be written by AI and uploaded by anonymous self-publishers.

What's going on

A growing number of fake biographies, book summaries, and copycat titles are showing up on Amazon. Many are published through Kindle Direct Publishing, or KDP, which is Amazon’s self-publishing system that lets anyone upload a book for sale. Because the process is fast, people can post many titles in a short time, which is hard for a real person to do by hand.

These books often read like generic filler and include mistakes and made-up details. Some use AI-made cover images that do not resemble the real person. In several cases, text-checking tools estimated the writing was very likely produced by AI, which is software that generates text on demand (like an autocomplete that writes whole paragraphs).

Examples reported include an AI-written “biography” of tech journalist Kara Swisher credited to “Jane Coelho,” and a fake biography connected to British journalist Rory Cellan-Jones credited to “Steven Walryn.” In that case, the pseudonymous author account had published dozens of titles, including many in a single month. Amazon removed some of these listings after they were reported.

What to watch

Amazon has added a few speed bumps, including a three-books-per-day publishing limit and a rule that sellers must tell Amazon if they used AI, although customers may not see that label. The key question is whether Amazon will do more to stop lookalike books from crowding search results, since these titles can act like knockoff products placed next to the real thing on a store shelf.

Source: NYTimes