An author has discovered half a dozen AI-generated books, falsely using her name.
Writer Jane Friedman was checking her Goodreads profile last Sunday, when she discovered “a cache of garbage books” had been uploaded to Amazon that she didn’t write.
In a blog post titled “I Would Rather See My Books Get Pirated Than This (Or: Why Goodreads and Amazon Are Becoming Dumpster Fires),” Friedman explains why she believes the books were AI-generated. “I’ve been blogging since 2009—there’s a lot of my content publicly available for training AI models. As soon as I read the first pages of these fake books, it was like reading ChatGPT responses I had generated myself.”
By Tuesday, the books had been removed from her Goodreads profile and Amazon, but not before the story went viral, once again raising the issue of AI-generated content using an artist’s name without credit. This could be copyright infringement or spread misleading or fraudulent content that damages the reputation of writers.
Friedman has written extensively about the media and publishing industry and published a book called The Business of Being a Writer. The books falsely attributed to her included How to Write and Publish an eBook Quickly and Make Money and Promote to Prosper: Strategies to Skyrocket Your eBook Sales on Amazon.
In her blog post, Friedman implored sites like Goodreads and Amazon to create a way to verify the legitimacy of the books and for authors to block the listing of books falsely attributed to them.
Otherwise, the burden falls on authors to police websites for fraudulent books. “How can anyone reasonably expect working authors to spend every week for the rest of their lives policing this?” Friedman wrote. “And if authors don’t police it, they will certainly hear about it, from readers concerned about these garbage books, and from readers who credulously bought this crap and have complaints.” Another author reached out to Friedman and told her she’d had to report 29 illegitimate books to Amazon.
Friedman’s issue was resolved, but not without infuriating initial response from Amazon saying they could only be removed if her name was trademarked. She believes it’s her visibility and reputation as an author that finally pushed Amazon to take the books down. But it’s a disturbing issue for writers that likely doesn’t end here. “How long until it happens again?” tweeted Friedman. “What about authors who don’t have the ability to raise a big red flag like I do?”
