The Amazon Kindle Store has a prolific new author, ChatGPT. This raises many questions and concerns.
ChatGPT is listed as the author or co-author of at least 200 books on the Amazon Kindle store, according to Reuters. However, the actual number of books written by the robot is likely much higher, as Amazon policy does not require authors to report their use of AI.
The Amazon Kindle Store has a new prolific author, ChatGPT
“I can already see people making a career out of it,” said Brett Sheekler, who published the children’s book on the Kindle store. “The idea of writing a book finally seemed possible.”The latter’s self-published short story, “The Wise Little Squirrel: A Story of Savings and Investments,”is a 30-page AI-written and illustrated story that offers $2.99 for digital and $9.99 for physics. Although Brett Shikler says his book has made him less than $100 since it was published in January, he only spent a few hours creating it using ChatGPT and entries such as “write a story about a father who teaches his son financial concepts. ”
More examples of AI-generated content on the Kindle Store? The children’s story The Power of Homework, the poetry collection Echoes of the Universe, or the sci-fi epic set in an interstellar brothel, Galactic Pimp: Volume 1.
“This is something we really have to worry about, these books will flood the market and many authors will be out of work,” said Mary Rasenberger, general manager of the Authors Guild. “There needs to be transparency from authors and platforms about how these books are made or we’ll end up with countless low-quality books.”
This raises many questions and concerns.
Meanwhile, sci-fi outlet Clarkesworld Magazine has temporarily stopped accepting news from its readership after receiving a large amount of suspicious content, according to PCMag. While editor Neil Clark did not elaborate on how the content was discovered, he acknowledges that these reportedly robot-generated stories show “very obvious patterns.”“What I can say is that the number of applications that resulted in bans has reached 38% this month. While it is easy to reject and ban these materials, increasing their number will require changes. And as if that weren’t enough, as the technology continues to improve, their detection will become more and more subtle.”
Clarkesworld currently bans articles “written, co-written, or simply AI-assisted,”and the magazine has already banned more than 500 users this month for providing suspicious content. Clarkesworld pays 12 cents a month, making it a prime target. “From what I can tell, it’s not about credibility. It’s just a quick way to make some money. That’s all they care about,”wrote Neil Clark.
Besides the ethical issue of transparency, there are also issues of false information and plagiarism. For example, artificial intelligence bots, including ChatGPT, Microsoft Bing AI, and Google Bard, are prone to “hallucinations,” a term chosen for disturbing, inappropriate statements. In addition, these algorithms are trained on human-generated content – mostly without the knowledge or permission of the original author – and sometimes use identical syntax to the source.
Last year, CNET magazine used its own artificial intelligence model to write at least 73 articles on economics. Unfortunately, in addition to visual information indicating that the content was generated by artificial intelligence, these articles contained a number of factual errors and phrases that were almost identical to the existing articles. As a result of the operation, CNET had to make major corrections and put its tool on hold.