Is Amazon being flooded with A.I. Chatbot generated "books"?
a review and analysis on a weird book and further investigation of an emergent phenomenon on Amazon with a multitude of suspicious books being sold with the word "bible" in the title
Hey everyone !
As I stated in my previous post for the Book Club series (where I announced the results from the first Book Club poll for April) one of the books I had included in the poll was there as a way for me to test the water and see if people were really paying attention.
The ‘testing the water poll entry’ book is shown in the pic below and it almost won the poll.
Based on reading the table of contents in the preview online (prior to purchasing the copy you see in my hand in the pic above) and based on the page count listed on amazon I had speculated that the book is, at best, a shoddy quick overview of some isolated aspects of seed saving and at worst a strait up scam.
Due to those facts I doubted that it would be the compendium of “Seasoned Gardening Wisdom to Effortlessly Harvest, Dry, Store, & Germinate Seeds on a Budget | Learn How to Grow Natural & Healthy Fruit, Vegetables, Plants and Herbs” that it claimed to be, and unfortunately, it looks as though my suspicions were well founded.
The book is super small, I mean not only is the page count really low (Print length: 94 pages according to Amazon) for a book that claims to be “7 books in one” but there are half empty, three quarters empty and even entirely blank pages throughout the book. I`ll share pics below to show you what I mean. Given all the empty space and blank pages in the book it would be more accurate to describe it as a maybe 50 page “book” (or magazine?).
So, first of all, I personally am really in no place to criticize grammar (since my own grammar is atrocious) but beyond just having horrible grammar (about half of the sentences in the book begin with a lower case letter etc) the writing is just very strange. Nonsense uses of words are constant and it seems to me like the book was either a bunch of material copy pasted from some other language and filtered though google translate (with poor translation results) or it was something mish mashed together from an A.I. chatbot being fed a bunch of books.
I`ll share some pics below so you can see what I mean:
And here are a couple of my favorites:
“Why is kindergarten necessary?”
hmm, interesting question, though I do not see what that has to do with seed saving…
and last but not least:
“His eggplant project lasted six years. But when that period ended, Leech went from drinking three hours a day to an hour and a half a week.”
Well that sounds like a win if “Leech” is trying to quit drinking, but what does that have to do with seed saving?
I could go on as these strange sentences and word usages are all throughout the tiny book but I think you get the picture so i’ll stop there.
Some of the bad grammar is funny but honestly after reading the book I feel like I lost some brain cells just having been exposed to it.
Okay and now for the pics of all the empty space in the book:
Again, I could go on as these half empty (and some fully empty pages) are all throughout the tiny book but I think you get the picture so i’ll stop there.
One of the things that is funny about this strange little “book” is that when it comes to subject matter such as hybrid vs heirloom vs GMO (transgenic) seeds this book does a better job tackling discussing that subject matter than the book I am actually reviewing in April ( The Complete Guide to Saving Seeds: 322 Vegetables, Herbs, Fruits, Flowers, Trees, and Shrubs by Robert E. Gough).
So far, that is one of the main criticisms I have for Robert E. Gough and Cheryl Moore-Gough’s book (the fact that they have suspiciously totally omitted discussing GMO seeds, GMO seed companies and the detriments/inherent flaws of technology used to create transgenic seeds).
This “7 in one seed saving book bible” on the other hand broaches the subject of GMO seeds and the importance of fostering local “seed sovereignty” several times and provides information that is somewhat helpful. I`ll share a few pics below so you can see what I mean:
So it would seem that what ever source the copy pasted and/or AI chat bot generated content in the book above came from, it was a source that was at least willing to honestly look at the issue of GMO seeds, so I will give them that.
Now let us investigate the name and picture listed for the Author of this book.
Amazon lists the author as a “Benjamin Johnson” and provides an impressive sounding Bio (shown in pic below):
Yet, if you look up this name, nothing, no website for his “important seed collections” activities nor his “numerous treatises”. Seems to be a digital ghost.
In the book it states that this guy does Seed Saving workshops and educational functions “all over the country” and yet I could not find documentation of one single event involving this guy.
Okay, I figured, that is suspicious but lets give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he is old school and goes by word of mouth..
So I reverse searched the picture on Google and found this:
when I clicked on see exact matches, I discovered an array of alternative personas and professional careers all listed with this photo:
Is he “Benjamin Johnson” the “seed bible” author or is he Denny Rudolph the “Operations Supervision/Management specialist working in various industries and companies like: Home Depot, Fairdale Orthodontic and Adriatic Inc. Management and full operations ranging from $10,000 to $100,000 in budget assist owner.” ?
Or perhaps he is “Arnie Singer” the Dating Coach?
or maybe he is “Dominik Bob” the SoundCloud DJ?
Perhaps he is actually a psychiatrist named “Len Lantz” what wants to tell you about the wonders of internet based “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy” ?
Or maybe this image is just a stock photo of a model taken from a random picture frame company?
Maybe the image itself is AI generated and this is not even a human being? Who knows.. One thing is for sure however. The author listed under that book is a fabrication and the book itself is quite strange and of a very poor quality.
What do you think my friends?
Am I way off base?
Is this book actually written by a “Benjamin Johnson” (and he is just super shy and used a random pic off the internet to list his book)?
Is this book generated by an A.I. chatbot?
Or just a copy pasted mish mash of poorly translated seed saving material put together by an inept and unscrupulous human being by hand?
As I noted in a comment recently, I have observed increasingly diminished attention spans in most people engaging online now a days (with so many who spend many hours a day plugged into the endless scrolling feeds of twitter/instgram/tictok type social media platforms).
I had included that “seed bible” book as a sort of litmus test to get a feel for how much this Book Club series was going to be influenced by the proclivity of many of us to “judge a book by it’s cover” (and title).
I was somewhat disappointed when I saw it in the lead for votes but I thought, “hey at least reviewing it can provide a cautionary tale about judging a book by it’s cover and the frailties of democratic voting systems in the age of endless scrolling and clicking like on titles and pictures of things syndrome”.
It would seem that this thought experiment was worth my while and this investigation has provided more of an important cautionary tale than I expected.
Upon further investigation I see that there are a whole range of different books claiming to be “seed saving bibles” available on Amazon (all claiming to be anything ranging from 4 in one books to 15 in one books, and all having suspicious looking author bios and/or pitiful page counts!).
Perhaps even more disturbingly, after investigating even further on Amazon I found there are also a range of other books with the word “bible” in the title claiming to be multiple-books in one covering a range of other topics from preserving, foraging, vegetable gardening, electro culture, homesteading to survival techniques, to farming to composting.
These “books” all have suspiciously low page counts considering they claim to have multiple books combined into one and they have very pretty cover images that (if you were to judge the book purely by the cover, might give you the impression that the content inside will be rich and beautiful). As we discovered in the “seed bible” book above, I doubt that would actually be the case if you were to investigate further.
I`ll share some pics below with the page count highlighted so you can see what I mean:
I could go on as the list of these types of books is apparently perpetually growing on amazon but I think you get the point.
I have not done any similar investigating into the books in the pics above to see if they have similar bogus contents and fake author pics/bios but if any of you feel compelled to investigate further and find anything worth sharing I would appreciate if you could leave a comment.
This leads me to believe that these books are part of some kind of copy pasting of other people’s material and combining together make a quick buck scam/trend, or perhaps some kind of collection of A.I. Chatbot generated book creating racket that is proliferating on Amazon right now. I don’t know if these have a centralized source or if there are various scammers that are tryna compete with each other, but there sure are a great many fake looking authors listed.
Is Amazon becoming a staging ground for a massive invasion of AI chatbot generated “books” that will be flooding into our book stores and libraries in the coming years ?
Who is running this literary racketeering operation ?
How many people will read fake AI chat bot generated books on preserving, gardening, foraging or homesteading and trust the content, resulting in food poisoning, lost crops, eating dangerous wind plants or setting up faulty homesteading machines?
In this time of people endlessly scrolling down lists of images on social media and amazon type platforms, clicking like and purchase on things without further investigation, how many millions of billions of dollars will the scammers rake in during the coming years?
Okay that is it for me today people. Thanks for taking the time to read this. I would value any thoughts, intuitions, observations or evidence you can provide in the comments section.
Just to be clear and avoid confusion: this post is Not April’s Book Club review.
You are 100% correct in your assessment of what's happening to books Gavin. I return them when they are so obviously shills. It may be, in addition to A.I., actual people scanning in old books whose first language isn't English, the old book they are scanning not being of good quality and then coming up with symbols, instead of letters, non-existent words and no one is capable of Proof Reading. One Book I sent back had all the errors highlighted. I don't know if anyone corrected the publication or just went on selling the book as is. You should send this book back with your highlights and demand your money back. I avoid purchasing anything off Amazon, but some things can only be bought there. When it comes to Gardening, Permaculture, Composting, Seed Saving, Fermenting, food preserving - YOU ARE NOW MY GO TO!
A compelling argument in favour of your local independent bricks and mortar book store, and perhaps an Achilles heel for the online retailer aiming to monopolize every printed word. Thanks for the heads up.