Tag Archives: AI

Amazon and fake AI books

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I saw a story on TV that intrigued me to find out more.

Here’s a summary from Quartz:

Author Jane Friedman spotted more books on Amazon this week that falsely claimed to be written by her than ones she actually wrote.

At least five books under her name were taken down from Amazon yesterday (Aug. 8) after Friedman wrote a blog post on Aug. 7 detailing her experience finding books under her name being sold on Amazon and listed on Goodreads, the Amazon-owned social media and book-logging platform for readers.

https://qz.com/amazon-ai-generated-books-using-real-authors-names-1850720961

With the advent of AI, people are creating books in the voice of authors and selling them on Amazon as that author’s book. Jane Friedman had trouble contacting Amazon and getting the imposter books being sold in her name off their site. She discovered she needs to trademark her name to have more protection against this scam.

Here’s another story about the fake IA books on Amazon:

Five books for sale on Amazon were removed after author Jane Friedman complained that the titles were falsely listed as being written by her. The books, which Friedman believes were written by AI, were also listed on the Amazon-owned reviews site Goodreads.

“It feels like a violation, because it’s really low quality material with my name on it,” Friedman told the Guardian. The Ohio-based author has written several books about the publishing industry, and the fraudulent titles mimicked her real work. How to Write and Publish an eBook Quickly and Make Money and A Step-by-Step Guide to Crafting Compelling eBooks, Building a Thriving Author Platform, and Maximizing Profitability were two of the listed books. Friedman’s real books include The Business of Being a Writer and Publishing 101.

One of the falsely attributed books’ descriptions read: “This book offers practical strategies, tips, and techniques to help writers streamline their writing process, accelerate their eBook publication timeline, and maximize their earning potential.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/aug/09/amazon-removes-books-generated-by-ai-for-sale-under-authors-name

Have you heard about this scam before? What are your thoughts about AI and writing?

Will they take a six-month pause?

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Cactus blooms

A cactus beginning to bloom. This is either a fish hook or hedgehog cactus.

Did you hear that Elon Musk, Andrew Yang and Steve Wozniak signed a letter asking artificial intelligence labs to put a pause on their development? Around 1,000 tech gurus signed the letter asking for a pause on development until shared safety protocol could be developed, implemented, and reviewed by independent experts.

What do they know that we don’t?

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, who released ChatGPT-4, admitted he was a little scared of what they’ve created. But he didn’t sign the letter.

A headline popped up on my phone stating what jobs would be lost first to AI. Accounting, mathematics and writing. It’s predicted 20% of jobs will be wiped away. That’s 20% of our workforce with no insurance or income.

I’m reminded of a freelance writing job that kept me busy during the early days of the pandemic. I featured small businesses for a trade magazine and another magazine highlighted parks and rec. I’d receive an email from the editor with a list of contacts and questions to ask. Each story had to include several things, like the square footage of the business and revenue. The assignments began to feel robotic because it was so formulaic. What kept it interesting were the people I interviewed. They had unique stories of how they created their businesses and what they were doing to make things work during the pandemic.

If you take people out of the equation, what do we have left? What are your thoughts?

Bird Buddy Update

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A Gilded Flicker who visited my Bird Buddy feeder.

I received a notification to update my Bird Buddy AI feeder. That’s when the trouble began. The update stopped halfway through the process. I read the instructions on the app. It said to press the on button until you got a flashing green light. I pressed and got a red flashing light.

Then the app said my bird feeder was offline. I spent the better part of a day fiddling with it. In order to do the update, the helpful notes said to fully charge the camera unit.

I brought the Bird Buddy inside, unscrewed the camera and plugged it in for hours.

I won’t go through all the things I tried repeatedly. But I finally decided I should do a factory reset. I was quite upset, because the Bird Buddy has given me lots of joy the past few weeks. I’d be frustrated to have it break already.

I wrote about Bird Buddy HERE and posted bird photos on Thanksgiving.

The Bird Buddy has to pair with Bluetooth on your phone. It also has to be connected to WiFI. I couldn’t get either to work. It worked until I tried the update.

Fortunately, the app has a troubleshooting tab and I went through the steps. It turns out I had inadvertently done a factory reset by pressing the button too long — getting the red flashing light.

I had to unpair the Bird Buddy from my Bluetooth and remove my feeder from the App. Then I started over as if it was a new feeder and Voila! It works again.

I bought a Bird Buddy for my soon to be 91-year-old dad. I will set it up for him and hopefully he won’t have issues with updates!

With electronic devices, are you handy at figuring them out or do you let someone else in your family fix issues? What frustrates you about electronics?

A Curve-Billed Thrasher.