AI busted impersonating author by writing and selling books under their name

An author checked her Goodreads profile last Sunday and realized that multiple books had been unlawfully published under her name.

The author is Jane Friedman, who took to X a few days ago to announce that following checking her Goodreads profile, she realized there are a "cache of garbage" books that had been uploaded to Amazon, which she didn't write. Friedman took to her blog and explained that she believes that the books were AI generated and that they were created through an AI model that had been trained on her blogging, which has been constant since 2009.

Friedman writes that she read the first pages of the books and immediately noticed the text was similar to ChatGPT responses. The author posted an update on Tuesday this week saying that the books from a Goodreads profile and Amazon were removed but not before this story of hers went viral, insinuating that the removal only took place because of notoriety within the writing and publishing community.

Furthermore, Friedman requested that Amazon and Goodreads create a way for the platforms to verify the content that is being published is authentic to authors that have their names attached to the project. Most surprising was the sheer number of books that Friedman had to report, which the author writes totaled 29 illegitimate books.

"How long until it happens again?" tweeted Friedman. "What about authors who don't have the ability to raise a big red flag like I do?"

While the request from Freidman was fulfilled, it came after an annoying response from Amazon that said that the books couldn't be removed because Friedman was unable to present official documentation that proved her name was trademarked.