Writers such as Rory Cellan-Jones are dealing with widespread book spam, frequently featuring multiple false titles uploaded within a single day
Publishing a book is a significant milestone for any writer, including Rory Cellan-Jones.
“As with any author, I routinely keep an eye on Amazon,” he explained. “And then, something unexpected popped up.”
The former BBC technology correspondent penned a memoir delving into his family’s history. What caught his attention on Amazon was a biography of himself, complete with an amateurish cover, written by someone unfamiliar to him.
“I thought, ‘This is peculiar – who’s crafting a biography about me?'” Cellan-Jones shared with the Observer. “I’m realistic; it’s already a challenge for me to sell books about my own life, let alone for others to do so.
Yet, upon scrutinizing a few excerpts, Cellan-Jones found himself targeted by an individual attempting to capitalize on his memoir by releasing a book seemingly generated by artificial intelligence. This incident was part of a surge in AI-generated titles that emerged in the wake of the introduction of ChatGPT, enabling individuals to produce pages of text without the labor of manual composition.
Amazon is effectively allowing the spread of book spam and showcasing it to the person most angered by it—Rory Cellan-Jones, the transformed author
Cellan-Jones’s book, titled “Ruskin Park: Sylvia, Me and the BBC,” recounts his discovery of a shoebox filled with letters from his mother, unveiling her romantic involvement with his father. Meeting his father at the age of 23, the book also details how his mother spent the majority of her life in a one-bedroom flat in south London. He characterized it as a narrative “about growing up with a single mother and a father who wasn’t present.
In contrast, the book vying with his family’s investigative tale, as per Cellan-Jones, was “pure fiction.” He commented, “There are sections depicting the Cellan-Jones family, an academic household gathered around the dining table… His father portrayed as a benevolent academic, his mother as a teacher. It’s simply untrue.
Then, Amazon sent me an email with the message: ‘You might be interested in this.’ Their algorithm had concluded that I would want this unrelated book instead of suggesting my meticulously crafted work that I’ve poured my heart and soul into… Essentially, they are permitting the spread of book spam and endorsing it to the very person who finds it most aggravating.”
Amazon did eventually remove the fake biography and other works by the anonymous author, but numerous similar titles manage to slip past the safeguards designed to filter out subpar books.
It has been relatively straightforward for book spammers to publish numerous titles in a single day through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) system, which empowers authors to independently release both ebooks and printed books.
An individual using the pseudonym “Steven Walryn” published more than 30 books, primarily comprising nonsensical and redundant guides on various camera brands, along with a couple of fantasy romance novels. In May, they released 15 of these books on the same day, and Amazon removed them last week.
Amazon couldn’t provide details on the number of books it prevents from being published or those that have been removed. In August, Jane Friedman, a publishing writer, successfully urged Amazon to take down five counterfeit titles falsely attributed to her, which seemed to be generated by AI.
“Amazon is evidently grappling with significant challenges due to the surge in AI-generated content on its platform, and it appears to be trying to catch up,” remarked Nicola Solomon, the CEO of the Society of Authors (SoA).
Recently, Amazon announced that publishers of new Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) releases must disclose if their books contain AI-generated content and are limited to publishing three books daily, changes welcomed by Solomon.
However, these minor adjustments appear more directed at streamlining Amazon’s processes than benefiting readers and human authors,” she observed. The SoA is pushing for Amazon to explicitly label AI-generated products and empower readers to filter out titles created by AI.
Rashik Parmar, the Group Chief Executive of BCS, the chartered institute for IT, stressed the necessity for government intervention to mandate the inclusion of a digital watermark on AI-generated material, facilitating easy tracking.
Parmar stated, “The UK has a unique opportunity to lead in responsible computing,” provided that legislation can assist British IT professionals in upholding a higher ethical standard. He also raised the possibility of “coded in Britain” becoming a symbol of something exceptional.