AI-authored books about ADHD ‘for sale on Amazon'
Amazon has been accused of allowing AI-authored books about ADHD to be sold on its platform.
The online marketplace has been targeted by those looking to sell cheap-to-publish books written by artificial intelligence, which can include unhelpful or dangerous misinformation.
Chatbots now appear to be writing books about the condition, according to The Guardian.
Originality.ai, a US company that detects content produced by AI, analysed samples from eight books obtained by The Guardian.
The firm then awarded a rating of 100 per cent to each of the samples for its AI detection score, effectively confirming it was highly confident that the books were written by a chatbot.
Texts highlighted by the newspaper as being suspected AI-authored reads include Navigating ADHD in Men: Thriving with a Late Diagnosis and Men with Adult ADHD: Highly Effective Techniques for Mastering Focus, Time Management and Overcoming Anxiety.
Robot-written texts
It comes after AI were accused of copying a Holocaust survivor's memoir last week.
Other robot-written texts have included mushroom-foraging books, travel guides and weight-loss recipe books.
Michael Cook, a computer science researcher at King's College London, told The Guardian that it was 'frustrating and depressing to see AI-authored books increasingly popping up on digital marketplaces' particularly on health and medical topics, which could result in misdiagnosis or worsen conditions.
Yet he added that Amazon's business model incentivised this kind of practice as it made 'money every time' shoppers purchased books, regardless of whether the work was 'trustworthy or not'.
An Amazon spokesman told The Guardian: 'We have content guidelines governing which books can be listed for sale and we have proactive and reactive methods that help us detect content that violates our guidelines, whether AI-generated or not. We invest significant time and resources to ensure our guidelines are followed and remove books that do not adhere to those guidelines.
'We continue to enhance our protections against non-compliant content and our process and guidelines will keep evolving as we see changes in publishing.'
Threat to creative industries
High-profile artists have repeatedly warned of the threat AI poses to the UK's creative industries.
More than 1,000 artists have urged ministers to abandon plans to allow their work to be used in the training of AI models.
Last month, Abba's Bjorn Ulvaeus joined the row over government plans to water down copyright laws for the benefit of big tech companies.
Speaking to The Times, the Swedish star said: 'Copyright is the oxygen which creators and the creative economy depend on for their existence and survival.
'They cannot be sacrificed. Unfortunately, there is an alternative and, in my opinion, more dangerous view, driven by profit-seeking tech companies. That view favours a weaker rights framework and broad exceptions to copyright.'
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