One genre of AI-generated books on Amazon is scaring foragers and mycologists alike: we're talking cookbooks as well as beginner's mushroom identification guides.
Amazon has an AI-generated book problem. This problem has been reported many times by journalists for months. Many of these books are obviously nonsense designed to make money.
But experts say AI-generated foraging books, in particular, could actually kill people if they eat the wrong mushroom, because an AI-written guide said it was safe.
The Mycological Society of New York (NYMS from the New York Mycological Society) warns on social media that the proliferation of AI-generated foraging books could "mean life or death".
A quick scan of Amazon's mushroom and foraging books revealed several books that are likely written by ChatGPT, but are being sold without any indication that they were created by AI. These books are marketed as if they were written by a human being, when they probably aren't.
The 404 Media use text scanners GPT and AI image detection tools on some of the suspicious books and found that they were most likely created by artificial intelligence, with authors who may not even exist.
