AI-Generated Books of Nonsense Are All Over Amazon's Bestseller Lists
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Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited bestseller list was full of books with titles like “Apricot bar code architecture” and “Jessica’s Attention” earlier this week.

My title might be a bit hyperbolic, but stuff like this worries me. I love to read and I love reading on a kindle. This has been going on for a while, but it has now reached absurd levels.

  • sab@kbin.social
    2·
    1 year ago

    If this indeed breaks Amazon then at least that is one silver lining of AI. It’s a shame indie authors are losing their platform, but they’ll find another.

      • sab@kbin.social
        5·
        1 year ago

        There’s even a federated alternative, BookWyrm!

        …I guess these days the Fediverse is my hammer of choice, and every problem with the internet is a nail.

        • jherazob@beehaw.orgEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          Not everything has an answer yet, for example Discord, there’s alternatives but none on Fedi. Also somebody earlier was mentioning fanfiction sites, there’s problems with all the existing ones and again, no Fedi alternative. However, not everything needs to be federated, look at Wikipedia for example.

          • MarionWheeler@beehaw.orgEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            Honestly, AO3 is pretty based for what it is, especially when you consider how the two main competitors (FFN and Wattpad) are ad driven with all the problems that entails. Tho come to think of it, now I’m getting worried about FFN getting enshittified…

        • Jyrdano@kbin.social
          0·
          1 year ago

          How does the federation work in this case? Do I have to create a new account there, or can I see their content using my Kbin account?

          • sab@kbin.social
            1·
            1 year ago

            I guess the most intuitive way to federate is that you can follow @user, after which all reviews published by the user will appear in your subscriptions. You can participate in the conversation as normal, and boost it to increase visibility across the Fediverse.

            If you want to do more sophisticated things like manage your library or post reviews, I think you’ll have to sign up for an instance of BookWyrm. :)

        • jmp242@sopuli.xyz
          0·
          1 year ago

          Unfortunately it is extremely sparse vs goodreads. Maybe someday it will catch up, but I really didn’t find it useful right now. Then again I am def a lurker on goodreads so where I read lists and reviews from doesn’t matter that much.

          • Mummelpuffin@beehaw.orgEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            I guess what I don’t get is what were people using GoodReads for? Because I’m using BookWyrm to just track what I already wanted to read and use the review system as a way to sum up books for myself.

    • festus@lemmy.ca
      1·
      1 year ago

      I don’t think these particular books are even generated by large language models - from the examples the content is just meaningless nonsense.