New AI plague: fake books

[herzlos]

I've just seen this from Jane Friedman who noticed a pile of books appeared in her catalogue on Amazon and Good Reads that she knew nothing about. They seem to be generated via AI in her "style" and attributed to her on Amazon, then synced up automatically. As she doesn't have copyright on these books or her name, Amazon claim to be unable to do anything about it.

uk.news.yahoo.com/video/author-sounds-alarm-avalanche-fraudulent-152656882.html

Do you think we'll find a solution to this sort of thing? Who does technically own the copyright? What new horrors will AI facilitate next?

[Haighus]

Surely that is just straight-up fraud though? Copyright doesn't come into it. The books are being falsely sold using the reputation and name of a real author.

I am not surprised that Amazon doesn't care, but I am sure they are probably supposed to do something about fradulent listings.

[herzlos]

I'd assumed so too, but I don't think there's technically any reason you couldn't have 2 authors with the same name beyond confusion.

I guess it means all authors now need to go and trademark and copyright their own names.


The authors would presumably be able to sue the producer of the fraudulent book though, since the AI ones are almost certainly awful and will tarnish the real authors reputation just by existing.

[Haighus]

Aug 15, 2023 5:30:29 GMT -5 herzlos said:

I'd assumed so too, but I don't think there's technically any reason you couldn't have 2 authors with the same name beyond confusion.

I guess it means all authors now need to go and trademark and copyright their own names.


The authors would presumably be able to sue the producer of the fraudulent book though, since the AI ones are almost certainly awful and will tarnish the real authors reputation just by existing.

Hmm, so if I wrote a series of books about about transphobes getting their comeuppance under the pen name J.K.Rowling, that couldn't be construed as fraud? Would it be defamation perhaps?

It probably needs challenging in court. It is an odd one, because names are names and two (or more) people can have the same name as you say, but at the same time I think people would look poorly upon a new author going by William Shakespeare or J.R.R.Tolkein even if that was their birthname.

Maybe the kicker is that they are aping her style (which they have to, being AI) which would constitute intent to deceive the public as to who is writing the piece?

[herzlos]

I think so, but you'd never get a real publisher to take it on. You could probably self-publish, go digital or print on demand though.

It's definitely going to need tested in court and legislated against since it's never really been possible to do this on the same scale before, and the consequences could be devastating to the industry.

With AI and self-publishing there's really nothing to stop someone producing thousands of knock-off books in a matter hours and render any online e-book repository useless. Hopefully proper book stores will at least make some basic checks that the author is the real one, because the fakes won't come from the right publisher.

The other risk with AI books of course is trying to figure out who to sue.

[Disciple of Fate]

Problem is that 'authors' can just verify AI written books, as long as the book doesn't claim to be from the writer of ..., there are a lot of authors with similar names (at least in my experience). There is no good solution to this for ebooks. Larger publishers can probably run recognition software before it goes to print.

[easye]

As an author, this concerns me greatly.

I mean, if the market is flooded with crappy wargame rules using my name how will consumers know that only half of those crappy rulesets were actually written by me!

I kid, but this is an example of how our current laws and structures are not equipped to handle AI yet.

[bobtheinquisitor]

I never before thought of Jose Luis Borges’ Library of Babel as a harrowing warning of the coming dystopia, but here I am.