Writers have raised the issue of their content being used to train massive language models without their consent on numerous occasions. There are new advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology every other day as it is developing quickly. Recently, a writer gained notoriety for claiming that multiple books appearing to be published under her name on Amazon were fraudulent and that she had nothing to do with them.
A brief about Author admits that bogus AI-written books bearing her name were being sold on Amazon
The author discussed the problem in a blog post and disclosed that up to 5 books under her name on Amazon were not authored by her and appeared to be produced by AI. These books were primarily authored by AI, if not entirely, which damaged the author’s reputation. Since the author’s name had not yet been registered as a trademark, Amazon first declined the author’s request to have the books removed. She asserts that the publisher took action and deleted the books from both Amazon and Goodreads after she began raising the issue on social media.
Author Jane Friedman has over 25 years of expertise in the media and publishing fields. She is the author of publications like Publishing 101 and The Business of Being a Writer. However, products like Igniting Ideas: Your Guide to Writing a Bestseller eBook on Amazon and How to Write & Publish an eBook Quickly and Make Money were being sold on Amazon under her name. According to Friedman, these ‘crap’ publications were being posted on Amazon with her name attached.
She said that the person behind it all is attempting to capitalize on her name in a blog post on her website. She continued by saying that she was aware that these novels appeared to have been produced by AI because she frequently employed those technologies to see how well they could replicate her work. Since Friedman started blogging in 2009, a lot of her material is accessible online for LLM training.
I also engage in a lot of self-prompting, such as asking, “What would Jane Friedman say about developing an author platform? Since I started blogging in 2009, a lot of my information is publicly accessible and can be used to train AI models. It was like reading my own ChatGPT comments as soon as I opened the first page of these bogus books, she said.
