https://rollingstone.com.br/guia-livro/a-amazon-eo-maior-marketplace-de-livros-online-do-mundo-e-esta-repleto-de-copias-feitas-por-ia/

When the journalist and author Talia Lavin looked online for the first time for his new book, Wild Faith: How the Christian Right Is Taking Over Americashe expected to find the normal things that accompany a book the week of its release: a pre-order link, the occasional listicle, and maybe a review or two. But instead, she found at least five complete copies of her work at the shopping retail giant Amazon — almost all apparently created with the help of generative AI.

“The book is a history of the last 50 years of the Christian right with a particular focus on family dynamics and child abuse in evangelical communities,” Lavin account to Rolling Stone. “All [falsificações] they used the phrase wild faith, but some were biographies. One was an inspirational self-help book, which I found darkly funny. It was surreal.” The books had titles like Talia Lavin Prosopography: You Need to Have a Wild Faith to Succeedand, Talia Lavin Biography: Why You Need Wild Faith to Succeed and Tania Lavin Biography: The Wild Faith to Take Over America — all with titles and paragraphs similar to his work, but full of spelling, factual and grammatical errors.

This is not an isolated incident. What Lavin accidentally discovered is one of the most persistent problems in selling books online today. THE Amazon became the leading self-publishing platform with Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), a software that allows the user to upload their manuscript and create purchasable e-books and brochures. According to the company’s marketing material, Amazonthe platform is a way for authors to gain control over the “content, design, price, audience, and advertising” of their work, all useful tools for selling a book without a traditional publisher. But although independent authors have used the KDP To create digital publishing empires, a much bigger problem has emerged: AI-generated counterfeit books. Published authors say these fakes are frustrating and nearly impossible to stop. But as the practice thrives online, authors tell the Rolling Stone that it’s not just the small loss of money that frustrates them. It’s the fact that the flood of fake books is making bookselling — and the internet — worse for everyone else.

“The problem with these crap books is not just that they are diverting revenue that should be in the pockets of the writers who wrote the books. The problem is that they are misleading buyers,” he says Cory Doctorowauthor of Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It. “These are trash books that exist to suck money from the unwary and get away with stealing readers and writers.”

The current problem of AI-forged books appears to have originated from the online shadow job community of KDP. A quick search on TikTok shows around 90 thousand videos and tutorials on how to make passive income on KDP with constant AI publishing. These creators — many of whom sell their own workbooks and classes on how to game the system KDP — take classic public domain literature and use AI to add summaries and discussion questions before relisting it on the site with a new cover. Many also use AI to design and publish easy versions of books like children’s books, coloring sheets, or cookbooks. But AI-forged books in Amazon take this instinct a step further, not just by using public domain books, but by making AI versions of new books that have just been released — the ones that more people are likely to seek out.

AI-forged books operate in a legal gray area to get around obvious copyright issues. U.S. copyright law covers “specific creative expression” for authors at the time they write their literary works — a protection that is then registered with the U.S. Copyright Office during traditional publishing. But the law also allows fair use of copyrighted material for things like commentary or education. This means handouts on the themes of a famous piece of classic literature, or perhaps a study guide on the influences of a particular author. AI fakes often reuse the main title of the book they are copying so that people can believe they are buying the real book, but a closer inspection of the listings shows that many are archived as biographies, handouts, or summaries — implying fair use. When contacted for comment by Rolling Stonea spokeswoman for Amazon said the site has content guidelines that limit which books are allowed and remove books that violate the guidelines or copyright. “We invest significant time and resources to ensure our guidelines are followed, and when we identify titles that do not meet these guidelines, we take immediate action such as removing non-compliant books or infringing content and suspending publisher accounts to prevent repeat abuse,” they wrote.

But some authors tell Rolling Stone that the verification process is not strong enough to prevent fakes from emerging — and often places the burden of policing these infractions on the perpetrator. When Seth Harpauthor of The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forcesfirst noticed that people were selling AI fakes of his book on Amazonhe immediately reported the fake AI copies to the company. But he tells Rolling Stone that the process ended up being “completely ineffective”. Every time he reported a forgery and it was removed, another one appeared in its place.

“My frustration is that this piracy is not being done as something marginal,” Harp it says. “This is coming from the most elite and well-connected sector of our economy. It’s just crazy to me to see this engine of intellectual property theft that is totally indefensible happening with the full cooperation of Amazon“.(A Amazonfor its part, insists it is trying to address the issue as it develops: “Our process and content guidelines will continue to evolve as we see changes in AI-driven publishing to ensure we provide the best possible experience for customers and authors,” the spokesperson tells Rolling Stone).

Lavin purchased physical copies of the AI ​​forgeries of his book and was not surprised to discover that each was useless in its own way. Some of them were incredibly short and seemingly taken directly from her website. Wikipedia as a kind of biography of her, combining public summaries of her book and available chapters as if they were about her life. Others were full of incorrect information, such as identifying her as a teacher. One was his book, but it looked like it had been translated into another language and then translated back into English. To Lavinthe experience made her oscillate between fun and frustration. But it also left her concerned about the systems that allowed forgeries to be made so easily.

“I definitely felt a sense of violation. I worked for three fucking years on this book. I talked to over a hundred people about the worst child abuse they had ever experienced in their lives,” she says. “You spent 20 minutes entering prompts and now you’re going to make money, because when you search Wild Faithall of these appear.”

Doctorowthe author of Enshittificationhas AI fakes of his own book in Amazon. It’s an ironic situation — especially considering he’s best known for popularizing the descriptor how things are getting worse and harder online for the average person to use. Doctorow tell Rolling Stone who believes the proliferation of AI fakes is a direct result of Amazon not investing in content moderation, and a perfect example of enshittification in action.

“That’s the process by which you see enshittification happening,” he says. “It’s a theory about what happens when a business no longer has to worry about the consequences of being terrible.”

Each of the authors who spoke to the Rolling Stone says that the Amazon has a clear responsibility to invest in more software and moderation that stops fake AI books like these from harming readers and authors. As it stands, they feel that AI fakes may just become an understood occupational hazard for people who want to share their writing with others. This doesn’t change the work they did on their books. But it makes the online world harder to navigate.

“It’s silently violent. You’re stealing my work, my face. You’re stealing my life and writing lies about it,” Lavin it says. “On an individual level, it’s not like I’m some avenging Joan of Arc against some great humiliation. But taken together, this is the biggest book marketplace in the world. And look how easily it’s distorted that way.”

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