# An Author Says Books Attributed To Her Were Written By A.I **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths, ai\ **Created:** [August 27, 2023, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-author-says-books-attributed-to-her-were-written-by-a-i/989185 "2023-08-27T16:17:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2023, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-author-says-books-attributed-to-her-were-written-by-a-i/989185/1 "2023-08-27T16:17:31Z")
To amplify[: an author named Jane Friedman says that several books with her name on them were written by A.I.](https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/10/tech/ai-generated-books-amazon/index.html)The books were sold on Amazon until she alerted them, with no way to tell at first glance they are not hers. Other authors are discovering the same thing. She says that she’s been blogging for so long that it would be easy to get a writing sample. The Authors Guild has been working with Amazon since this past winter to address the issue of books written by A.I. It seems like a pretty easy deal if you want to make some quick money, and I’m sure this won’t be the last of it. Just grab pages off a site, plug 'em into ChatGPT, and Bob’s your alleged uncle. I know there was a big meeting in Congress to address this, but it’s a pretty fast-moving issue. I’m sorry if the title is clumsy. I couldn’t think of a better way to phrase it. ---
**Author:** ![dolphinboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dolphinboy/32/330_2.png) [@dolphinboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dolphinboy)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2023, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-author-says-books-attributed-to-her-were-written-by-a-i/989185/2 "2023-08-27T16:48:18Z")
To combat this, online retailers like Amazon will have add a step that somehow verifies that the submitted work was actually written by the author. This will add more cost for the retailer, but I can’t think of any other way around it. ---
**Author:** ![alovem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@alovem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alovem)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2023, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-author-says-books-attributed-to-her-were-written-by-a-i/989185/3 "2023-08-27T16:50:36Z")
Isn’t providing identification part of the process of submitting works for intellectual property rights? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2023, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-author-says-books-attributed-to-her-were-written-by-a-i/989185/4 "2023-08-27T16:55:59Z")
If someone has already written anything else for Amazon, they’d surely already have some sort of account, with bank account info, mailing address, or both, so Amazon knows how to send them royalty payments. So an imposter book that purports to be by that same person would also end up with the royalties going to the real author. Plus, even if you can squeak this scam by, the AI doesn’t really add much to it. Most folks aren’t going to be reading their Amazon books before they buy them. And if it’s after you buy them and you’re trying to get a refund, well, if a bot can write an entire novel that nobody can tell isn’t yours, that tells me that you’re not a good author to begin with. ---
**Author:** ![Jay\_Z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Jay\_Z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jay_Z)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2023, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-author-says-books-attributed-to-her-were-written-by-a-i/989185/5 "2023-08-27T18:58:32Z")
Amazon is going to have multiple situations where two authors with the same name have books on the site. Behind the scenes the proceeds go to two different people. But the users just see two different Jenny Wilsons. In the AI case the bio of the fake Jenny Wilson is going to be written up to be very similar to the real Jenny Wilson. As are the books. So, while behind the scenes the AI fakes go to a different account, it’s up to the user to figure out that these books are fakes. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2023, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-author-says-books-attributed-to-her-were-written-by-a-i/989185/6 "2023-08-27T19:01:51Z")
You still won’t get to the fakes by clicking “More from this author” on one of the real ones, though. ---
**Author:** ![Jay\_Z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Jay\_Z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jay_Z)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2023, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-author-says-books-attributed-to-her-were-written-by-a-i/989185/7 "2023-08-27T19:06:37Z")
No, but you might get them if you do a general search. And don’t know how to do “more by this author.” The people putting these books out there paid nothing for them, they don’t need to fool everyone, just some people. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2023, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-author-says-books-attributed-to-her-were-written-by-a-i/989185/8 "2023-08-27T19:22:38Z")
I look up Jane Friedman at True People Search and it returns 200 responses [and I would guess 200 is an artificial barrier set up by the site–so there is a good chance there are more]. It wouldn’t surprise me if more than one is an author. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2023, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-author-says-books-attributed-to-her-were-written-by-a-i/989185/9 "2023-08-28T06:12:39Z")
It’s honestly surprising there’s not already some level of verification, even if only for the bigger authors. Though there is the issue of the pen name. But if your pen name happens to be the same as the name of a verified author, that should probably be an issue. ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2023, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-author-says-books-attributed-to-her-were-written-by-a-i/989185/10 "2023-08-28T11:47:26Z")
There’s the infamous case of Stephen R. King. He presumably wrote his books himself, but definitely tried to cash in the fame of Stephen Edwin King. Amazon still has issues trying to separate the two when doing a search. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2023, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-author-says-books-attributed-to-her-were-written-by-a-i/989185/11 "2023-08-28T12:40:19Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > You still won’t get to the fakes by clicking “More from this author” on one of the real ones, though. Don’t be so sure. Doing a bit of searching on Amazon, I see that Jane Friedman is the author of books about the business of writing, like _The Business of Being a Writer (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)_. But there’s also an apparently legit author Jane **M.** Friedman, who wrote the 1993 book _America’s First Woman Lawyer: The Biography of Myra Bradwell_. And clicking on the author name on the Amazon page for that book brings up, under “Top Jane M. Friedman titles,” just that book and one called _Contract Remedies in a Nutshell_. Which the two customer reviews say is AI-generated nonsense, but which is currently available only in a paperback edition from 2007, with “Jane Friendman” identified as the author. I suspect there used to be an e-book version of this that got flagged for fraud and taken down, but somehow it still shows up as a paperback, and there are several used copies available from third-party sellers. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2023, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-author-says-books-attributed-to-her-were-written-by-a-i/989185/12 "2023-08-28T15:18:31Z")
Royalties were mentioned but I imagine a bigger problem for an author is when it is “found out” that they have been using AI to write their books when they really haven’t. How do you recover your reputation from something like that? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2023, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-author-says-books-attributed-to-her-were-written-by-a-i/989185/13 "2023-08-28T21:28:57Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Don’t be so sure. Well that’s just sloppy of Amazon, then. And it’s still not a new problem with AI; it’d be nearly as easy to do this with just ordinary human writing.