Artificial Intelligence: Misery Ahoy!

There’s a lot of disquiet about AI writing at the moment. Jane Friedman, who writes (very good!) ‘how-to’ non-fiction works about writing, found several AI-generated titles on Amazon that used her author name and were in the same area. In other words, the scammy account had published AI-written books pretending to be more titles from Friedman, obviously to cash in on her established reputation and reader base. The unsuspecting reader would think they were buying something of hers, when they were getting, well, garbage. The reader takes a hit, Friedman’s reputation takes a hit, scammy AI account takes the money.

Amazon could not give a damn about it. Friedman hadn’t written these scammy books, they weren’t associated with her real Amazon account, so she had no right/authority to have them removed. It wasn’t until there was a public furore and the Author’s Guild got involved that Amazon back-tracked and did something about removing those particular books from their platform.

But it’s not just high-profile accounts like Friedman’s that get targeted. Small, relatively unknown authors get scammed this way too. I know this. Because my account on Amazon has similarly been targeted, as I found a few days ago. And believe me, if a well-known and respected author like Friedman gets the finger from Amazon, little unknowns like me do not fare any better.

A few days ago, I discovered three books on Amazon UK (I can’t find them on Amazon.com but I gave up about 12 pages in on the search results) that appear to be AI-generated, and which come up when I search for my author name.

These books reverse my author name to “Butler Anna“. Already a step up from using my actual author name, the way they did Friedman’s, but unmistakably a similar attempt to exploit a reader looking for my books. I can’t stress this enough – they come up when Anna Butler is put into the search box. They’re therefore becoming associated with my name, and with my brand.

They are, quite simply, dreadful. You only have to read their blurb and look at their ‘Look Inside’ sample to see that they’re AI-generated nonsense. They’re frighteningly bad.

(There’s also a load of AI generated colouring books that list Anna Butler as their author, but they’ve been there for years and I can’t get them taken down either. I’m not so worried about them, because colouring books are hardly my known genre. They don’t equate to novels. I doubt whether people looking for them will associate Taking Shield or Lancaster’s Luck with them and really think they’re anything to do with me.)

Anyhow, these three “novels”:

The Story of Two Golden Chairs – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-Two-Golden…/dp/B0BWM9L2TJ

The Story of The Last Bus – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-Last-Bus…/dp/B0BWMQ5TBC

The Story of Two Mango Trees – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-Two-Mango…/dp/B0BWM65GPG

Let’s take a look just at one of them – believe me, you won’t want to delve any deeper – so let’s focus on Two Golden Chairs.

Note: this is listed in Education, aimed at children 9-18. It’s only 31 pages long, so quite pricey at £4.69 (that’s about $5.97). I don’t charge that much for a Shield book, and every one of those is around the 100k word mark. The blurb is very apple-y, for something that’s supposed to be about chairs and has a paramedic’s vehicle as its cover.

And the inside? This is all you get when you click on read sample:

Not an apple, or a chair, or a paramedic in sight. And looking at that contents list, I don’t think we’ll find any. (In fact, that contents list is, in itself, a thing of wonder. I am all agog to find out what Section 5’s Flying Alkaline Technique is all about. My life is likely incomplete with it.)

So I girded up my loins and went to talk to Amazon. I opted for the Chat function. I’m still debating the wisdom of that since I suspect I might have been talking to a full cousin of author Butler Anna, rather than a real person. However…

All the Chat person could tell me was
– these books are coming up when I search for my own name, because of the similarity in names. No shit, Sherlock. I would never have guessed that for myself. And then this person had me wait while he went to talk to his technical support people and yaay, his tech support repeated this pearl of wisdom.
– no, he couldn’t do anything about removing the books because I hadn’t written them and therefore couldn’t get them taken down. So sad, so outa luck.
– then he gave me the link to allow me to report rights infringement, and when I pointed out that the mere fact the scam account had reversed my name didn’t amount to actionable infringement, no matter what damage the crud was doing to my brand, he did a virtual holding up of hands and shrugging.
– so, report each book as misleading content, he said. That’s all you can do.

Totally pathetic response, Amazon. Still, am reporting the shit daily.

The books are still there.

.

This, people, is what the future holds for authors, Amazon and Artificial Intelligence.

God help us all.

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