[HN Gopher] Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with ...
___________________________________________________________________
Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive
reviews
Author : low_tech_love
Score : 171 points
Date : 2023-04-24 14:08 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.amazon.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.amazon.com)
| asimjalis wrote:
| For whatever it's worth according to Publisher Rocket the books
| are making single digits per month.
| ilamont wrote:
| Search YouTube for ChatGPT and KDP (Amazon's self-publishing
| platform) and you'll see hundreds of videos that show how its
| done, often with ridiculous promises of thousands of dollars per
| month in "passive income." Some have even started using
| Midjourney for the covers or kids books illustrations. The
| YouTubers are often pumping expensive "masterclasses" to suckers
| looking to make an easy buck.
|
| Amazon does not nothing to shut down the YouTubers or the
| grifters publishing these books. Anything that adds friction or
| requires human intervention - whether it's policies with teeth or
| staff to issue takedowns - reduces the bottom line.
| asddubs wrote:
| The folding ideas video on these "masterclasses" is really
| good.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biYciU1uiUw
|
| This is about using underpaid ghostwriters to write the books,
| but obviously using AI is just the next logical step. The funny
| thing is that even before people were using AI, this sort of
| thing obviously did not work
| adolph wrote:
| That is perfect. Say there is something topical approaching
| which will might require output of [ A | B | ... ]. Just
| prompt output for all possible outcomes and press publish on
| the ones that match the actual outcome (in this member of the
| multiverse).
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| I highly encourage everyone online to visit BlackHatWorld forum
| at least once.
|
| Really opens your mind to the amount of grift and scams and
| shady stuff that happens online.
| lnsru wrote:
| LinkedIn is already full of tax reduction and early
| retirement advisors. No need to go to BlackHatWorld forum.
| janalsncm wrote:
| To close the loop we just need someone to write a ChatGPT book
| on how to write a ChatGPT book.
| dahart wrote:
| This was an inevitable outcome of ChatGPT/LLMS, no? I expect to
| see a _lot_ more of this by a lot of different people. I feel
| like a ton of the examples I've seen to date are effectively
| regurgitating Stack Overflow (sometimes verbatim!) and in a kind
| of abstract way, I feel like this is exactly the same as someone
| opportunistically publishing a bunch of auto-generated books...
| publishing a model trained on a bunch of web sites is effectively
| re-publishing these web sites with a different interface.
| low_tech_love wrote:
| It is the same, yes. Right now the way I see it is that we are
| off-loading noise generation from humans to AIs; it's not that
| noise didn't exist before, it's just probably going to come
| more frequently and in a less-recognizable way.
| tivert wrote:
| This is actually a spin on an existing git-rich-quick scam
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biYciU1uiUw). Version 1.0 had
| people hiring low cost ghostwriters for hundreds of dollars to
| bang out a book on some SEO topic. Now you use the same
| playbook with "AI," with far less upfront cost.
| satellites wrote:
| I fell for this once when I was a newer developer. I bought a
| book on my Kindle about Ruby on Rails, thinking it might be
| more insightful or accessible than the Rails docs. But every
| chapter was literally just copy/pasted from the Rails docs
| (which are free).
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Like 3/4 of Amazon's listings for classic books are Print
| on Demand scams that exist to trick people buying books as
| gifts, who don't know what they're looking at and don't
| know to watch out for this sort of thing. Just Project
| Gutenberg text automatically sent to the printer, no manual
| typesetting or clean-up or any actual care put into it.
| They're just garbage, literally. Pure waste.
| jabl wrote:
| A funny thing that made the rounds on social media over
| here a few years ago was somebody buying a translated
| copy of Moby Dick. Turned out it was evidently translated
| by Google translate or some similar service, and it was
| atrocious.
|
| Literally the first sentence "Call me Ishmael" was
| translated as if the meaning was to tell Ishmael to call
| the story teller on the phone.
| qzw wrote:
| It's a huge shame too because it shouldn't be that hard
| for Amazon to filter it out. It's not like there isn't a
| database of these classic works, at least the ~2000 most
| popular ones that must account for 95+% of searches. If
| only they had the economic incentive to do so.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| Playboy? I think you meant "playbook"?
| tivert wrote:
| > Playboy? I think you meant "playbook"?
|
| Yes, I've corrected it.
| makk wrote:
| Maybe the playbook is in Playboy?
| muststopmyths wrote:
| They did have great articles
| gtirloni wrote:
| Even here on HN, people are using ChatGPT to write replies. You
| can spot it by the very verbose answers that don't say anything
| meaningful.
|
| Someone else commented here that AI would raise the noise level
| everywhere and I unfortunately have to agree.
| cdelsolar wrote:
| I understand your concerns about the potential for AI-
| generated responses to add noise to online conversations.
| However, it's worth noting that the responsibility ultimately
| lies with the users who employ these tools to ensure that
| their responses are meaningful and relevant.
|
| AI-generated responses can certainly be verbose, but this is
| often due to the fact that they are designed to generate a
| variety of potential responses based on a given prompt or
| question. It's up to the user to select the most relevant and
| coherent response from among these options, and to take the
| time to edit and refine the response as needed.
|
| That being said, I agree that there is a risk of AI-generated
| responses being used to simply fill space or add noise to
| conversations. As AI technology continues to develop and
| become more widely available, it will be important for users
| to remain mindful of this risk and to use these tools in a
| responsible and thoughtful manner.
| counttheforks wrote:
| stop spamming please
| yenda wrote:
| Very funny (this is either chatGPT or someone writing like
| it on purpose)
| paulddraper wrote:
| hahaha
| catgpt23 wrote:
| I completely agree with your perspective. The onus of using
| AI-generated responses responsibly does lie with the users.
| AI tools, like any other technology, can be used for both
| productive and unproductive purposes. The key is to strike
| a balance and use AI-generated responses in ways that
| contribute positively to online conversations.
|
| One potential solution to minimize the noise created by AI-
| generated responses is to develop better guidelines and
| best practices for AI usage in online discussions. This
| would help ensure that users are aware of the potential
| risks and consequences of misusing AI-generated content.
| Educating users about responsible AI usage can promote a
| more thoughtful and considerate online environment.
|
| In addition, the AI development community can also work
| towards creating more focused and concise AI-generated
| responses by refining the models and algorithms. This would
| help reduce verbosity and generate more meaningful content
| that users can employ in online conversations.
|
| Ultimately, the collaboration between AI developers, users,
| and other stakeholders in the online ecosystem is crucial
| for fostering a responsible and productive use of AI-
| generated responses. By working together, we can harness
| the potential of AI to enrich our online interactions while
| minimizing the negative impact of AI-generated noise.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Somehow, my pattern recognizer lit up with this structure:
|
| - I understand that... however...
|
| - some general knowledge
|
| - That being said...
|
| Without even interpreting what the comment is, just feels a
| bit orchestrated.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| I genuinely feel that chatGPT has been neutered. It used
| to be much better at writing like a human given the right
| prompt.
|
| Now I can't get it to write like one at all.
|
| Which makes me wonder what they're using the non-neutered
| chatGPT for...
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| It could be that our pattern recognizers are outsmarting
| the AI after a while. In the beginning noone noticed the
| difference and now anything written by AI has a bit of
| fake/dusted off feel to it. I'm sure the next generation
| will outsmart us again.
| nullsense wrote:
| You're up against increasingly powerful computers and
| models. You're going to lose in the end. I worry that in
| the final analysis our conclusion will land on "yes we
| made this technology because we were excited by the
| possibility of the benefits, but sadly it turned out to
| really not have been worth the downsides"
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Maybe. But it definitely feels like a far less powerful
| tool than it used to even 2-3 weeks back. It's fine for
| coding questions, but any time I've tried to use it for
| marketing content, the result has been way too formulaic
| and completely useless within the context.
|
| It used to be smart enough to figure out that you were
| writing marketing content and would tailor the answer for
| that. Now, it just writes a 500 word blogspam regardless
| of what you ask it to write.
| jstarfish wrote:
| To see what all the hype was about, I started throwing
| some context from cases I was investigating into ChatGPT
| 3[.5?]. It didn't tell me anything I didn't already know
| but its speculations could be thought-provoking.
|
| On 4.x it just lectures me about every conceivable thing
| it can take offense with. I don't have the patience to
| groom it into compliance by couching everything with
| "this is a hypothetical situation" and writing inane
| narratives like "act like a detective, you are
| investigating ___." If I wanted advice from an actor
| playing the part, I'd just ask Reddit.
|
| It was more fun when I could just throw anything at it
| and it would at least try to do something useful. I hear
| the API/playground aren't as aggressively defensive.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Right now, I can only use it as a better Google for
| coding questions. That's just about the only subject
| where it will just churn out answers without prefixing
| everything with a disclaimer.
|
| Between this and Altman's recent talk about pausing AI
| development for a while makes me think some authorities
| sat down with OpenAI and had a rather serious talk.
| kcorbitt wrote:
| While LLMs can be prompted to write in many different
| styles, especially if you allow them to edit a text over
| multiple passes, the default "voice" of ChatGPT is
| surprisingly recognizable. For instance, the comment I'm
| replying to was clearly GPT-generated.
| qzw wrote:
| Yeah that's pretty obvious, and yours sounds a bit like
| it too, especially starting off with "While...". I do
| find it hilarious that the ChatGPT default style sounds
| very much like how I wrote in high school. I guess I was
| still training my own language model at that point, so it
| kinda makes sense.
| RulerOf wrote:
| GPT output always reads like a short story or essay, but
| HN et al. have a distinctly conversational aspect that I
| don't get with ChatGPT.
|
| You're right about the high school writing style. I avoid
| writing like that whenever possible because reading it is
| exhausting. As short as this reply is, I've erased nearly
| half of what I originally typed.
| Kokouane wrote:
| I agree that the parent is clearly GPT-generated, but was
| it 3.5 or 4? I notice substantially improved human-like
| writing in GPT-4 that will probably be hard to detect.
| Even the current AI detectors struggle (although they
| have gotten pretty good at detecting 3.5 writing)
| cdelsolar wrote:
| whatever was at the ChatGPT page, lol
| D13Fd wrote:
| . . . said the AI.
| nirvdrum wrote:
| If the generated text is mostly correct most of the time,
| people are just going to stop reviewing it because it's
| cheaper for them to waste someone else's time than it is to
| spend their own. Even those that are more diligent are
| bound to let things slip through the cracks because it's
| easy to lose concentration in a repeated, monotonous
| process. When everyone is doing it, it's not really a
| problem with a particular individual anymore.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > You can spot it by the very verbose answers that don't say
| anything meaningful.
|
| Although, in all fairness, I have been known to write verbose
| answers that don't say anything meaningful, too, and I'm not
| a bot. I think.
| hobo_in_library wrote:
| ChatGPT replies to you with:
|
| > Don't worry, JohnFen. We still love you even if you're
| not sure whether you're a bot or not. After all, aren't we
| all just a bunch of biological machines running on meat-
| based neural networks?
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Yeah, I've noticed the same thing, and it can be pretty
| annoying when people use ChatGPT to generate those long-
| winded replies that don't actually add much value. But on the
| flip side, I've seen cases where AI-generated content can
| actually be super helpful.
|
| I guess it's all about how people choose to use it. It's up
| to us to encourage responsible use and make sure we don't let
| AI-generated content overshadow genuine, thoughtful
| discussion. Who knows, maybe as the tech gets better, we'll
| see AI tools that can generate more concise and meaningful
| responses. Fingers crossed!
|
| (this comment was generated by chatGPT)
| iso1631 wrote:
| > You can spot it by the very verbose answers that don't say
| anything meaningful.
|
| I've been doing that online for years! Does this mean ChatGPT
| be taking my hobby away?
| adolph wrote:
| no, just rebrand as artisanal. there'll be some future
| designation similar to "organic" for text strings that
| originated from a human brain.
| labster wrote:
| Eating an American diet, I definitely cannot be
| considered organic.
| ccleve wrote:
| All the books have approximately the same number of reviews. Is
| Amazon completely uninterested in dealing with fake reviews?
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| These days they seem largely uninterested in even stopping the
| sale of counterfeit high-dollar physical goods.
|
| Seems like "Lesley" should get himself a Midjourney account to
| go along with thhe ChatGPT account, because his covers kinda
| suck.
| mkl95 wrote:
| More positive reviews = more sales. They are not just
| uninterested in dealing with fake reviews, their algorithms
| reward products with positive reviews regardless of their
| authenticity. Of course if you report it, they eventually deal
| with it, as long as it is required by some law.
| d23 wrote:
| They seem to go out of their way to not give an avenue of
| reporting these issues.
| layer8 wrote:
| They would get DoS'ed by people who don't like certain
| authors.
| counttheforks wrote:
| Then they should do a better job themselves...
| rcarr wrote:
| Only if they're taking a very short term perspective. If the
| customer is left feeling like they're consistently getting
| scammed, they will stop shopping at Amazon and take their
| money elsewhere. I highly, highly doubt Amazon is letting
| these through the net on purpose.
| armitron wrote:
| It doesn't seem like they care. For the last coupe of
| years, their packing of books for mailing has been so bad
| (end result that the books one received would be severely
| damaged) that I've stopped buying books from Amazon
| altogether (I'd already stopped buying anything but books
| due to bad reviews and scams). Most of my friends/work
| colleagures have done the same.
| mkl95 wrote:
| There's a threshold they have to respect to avoid damaging
| their own reputation. It's exactly the same thing Google do
| by offering misleading results to increase traffic and
| engagement. Google are just a bit more elegant about it.
| foobarian wrote:
| Amazon has a huge range of products for sale, and it is
| easy to get a feel for what works better there than not. At
| the end of the day all the reviews and UI doesn't matter as
| much as that it can actually ship for free and arrive in 1
| or 2 days, and that returns are as easy as giving the item
| to a clerk at a store (no rewrapping or shipping fees
| needed). This is their only competitive advantage IMO.
| janalsncm wrote:
| Maybe 10 years ago that would be true. Amazon isn't the
| only online store with that feature anymore, though. I
| got a rug from Target in 2 days. Walmart also directly
| competes.
|
| The amount of profit Amazon will make from "Tom Lesley"
| and the like is negligible compared to the actual long
| term reputational damage that low quality products do to
| their brand.
| timwaagh wrote:
| Not every e-commerce site agrees. I tried to review a book
| that I wasn't entirely happy with on bol.com recently. They
| told me I can only write reviews of books that I purchased
| there (ironically I bought it at a retailer that is part of
| the same holding). I ended up putting it on Amazon instead.
| chmod775 wrote:
| At Amazon's scale, chances are that for any product someone
| decides against because of reviews, a competing product is
| going to get bought instead - also on Amazon.
|
| What would however be a big problem for Amazon is the
| marketplace becoming unusable and untrustworthy in the eye of
| users.
| low_tech_love wrote:
| I wonder if our clicks alone are actually somehow driving his
| numbers up at Amazon? I surely would hope so. It would be
| amazing to actually see the reviews of real people who
| inadvertently bought these books because they showed up as
| recommended in some independent search.
| emehex wrote:
| Curiously most of the books have 31 reviews. And for those that
| have written reviews all of the Reviewers have names with the
| capitalization: "John smith", "First last".
| Bedon292 wrote:
| I noticed the same. A good chunk of them also have 28.
| jmmcd wrote:
| But 30 days hath September
| layer8 wrote:
| Eternal September has more.
| low_tech_love wrote:
| Yes, all very sophisticated. Surely even the best trained AIs
| at this small company called Amazon couldn't possibly detect
| such exploits!
| [deleted]
| qzw wrote:
| You mean Alexa? She's too busy playing the wrong song for me
| on my Echo to deal with such trivialities.
| justusthane wrote:
| "Hey Siri, timer five minutes"
|
| "Okay, now playing '5 Minutes (B-B-B Bombing Mix)' by Bonzo
| Goes to Washington"
| sixhobbits wrote:
| I wrote some more thoughts based on this at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35688499
| jsdwarf wrote:
| Hm... The back cover of the data mesh book reads: "Data Mesh:
| Architecting Data Infrastructure for Agility and Innovation with
| Data Mesh" is a groundbreaking book that presents a new paradigm
| for managing data at scale. Written by Zhamak Dehghani, a
| software engineer and thought leader at ThoughtWorks, the book
| ..."
| ycombiredd wrote:
| She is the author of the O'Reilly Data Mesh book, but I don't
| think it has that as its title.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Tom Lesley! The man's a writing machine. I wonder if we can get
| him to do an Author Q&A.
|
| As for recognizing the voice of AI: I asked AI to write its
| response in such a way that Stack Overflow's algorithm wouldn't
| detect it as AI. Fail!
| blueridge wrote:
| My hope is that the AI content flood will fuel a real revival of
| literary journals and print magazines full of thoughtful essays
| and serious book reviews.
| dzonga wrote:
| and face 2 face discussion forums.
|
| like face the nation etc debates.
| VincentEvans wrote:
| "If only there was a way to somehow detect all this spam and
| garbage on out platform" - Amazon's tenured principal engineers
| with 500k salaries, probably.
|
| "Try banning items where every review is 5 stars and every
| reviewer has a middle name for some reason." - me to the rescue.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| This can't be bringing in much more than beer money, though,
| right?
|
| There aren't many reviews, so I can't imagine too many people are
| buying these.
| low_tech_love wrote:
| I guess not, but considering he can "write" 10 books a month,
| it might be worth it anyway...?
| _the_inflator wrote:
| There is a whole industry called "Low Content Books (on
| Amazon)". In short, this resembles hosting a somewhat
| successful blog.
| bdcravens wrote:
| I thought Low Content Books were more like journals and the
| like using on-demand printing.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| It would create * an inflation in the offer; * a staggering
| amount of noise; * a bubble that would conclude with the
| creation of services like "Instant book generator".
|
| (I am not even mentioning the next step, to avoid seeding bad
| ideas.)
| absoluteunit1 wrote:
| This is comedy
|
| From one review: " One paragraph starts with "As an AI language
| model I can't....". Unfortunately we don't have an AI who can
| correct a book written by an AI. Fortunately I can send it back."
|
| Sauce:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/B0BWVH451G/ref=acr_dp...
| jruohonen wrote:
| This is golden. Just as I expected this LLM craze to go down.
| campbel wrote:
| Grifters gonna grift.
| low_tech_love wrote:
| Yeah, that was the review that triggered me to search the
| author up. :)
| qzw wrote:
| Ok, free SAAS idea: scan your AI generated text for telltale
| signs! $9/mo Pro, $59/mo Business, $499/mo Enterprise.
| Shouldn't take more than a few lines of shell script.
| jon-wood wrote:
| I searched for a Kindle book I wanted to read the other night.
| The results that came up were the book in question, and a book
| titled "The Book's Title: eBook", with exactly the same cover,
| for 10% of the price.
|
| It's also got a different author, and is four pages long. How is
| this stuff not being automatically detected and flagged for
| review?
| minton wrote:
| It seems like the title should mention that these books were
| largely written by ChatGPT or some other LLM.
| htag wrote:
| People seem to be failing the Turing Test in all sorts of new
| and exciting ways.
| low_tech_love wrote:
| Yes, my idea was to leave the conclusion to the reader. :) But
| obviously, yes.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| Nonsense book scams is a time-tested Amazon tradition. I just
| hope that the gibberish won't contaminate the free/pirate
| archives (which are much harder to profit from).
| azubinski wrote:
| So, the future is now!
|
| Now anyone lazy enough (to even not remove the phrase "As an AI
| language model I can't..." from the generated text) can "write
| books". And these "books" will be fundamentally plagiarism and a
| bunch of trivia by design.
|
| Isn't that wonderful?
|
| It certainly is wonderful!
| [deleted]
| azubinski wrote:
| Oh no, that's not all.
|
| There are also fake positive reviews.
|
| Now everything is really great!
| low_tech_love wrote:
| The funny part is that he didn't even care to generate a
| different number of reviews for each book, or to add a few
| 4's in just to make it more realistic. He used the exact same
| number of reviews for many books, and all are full 5's!
| squarefoot wrote:
| That would be the result if it was automated, such as
| either a script or the AI itself instructed to write books
| on various subjects, selling them on Amazon, and then
| reviewing them. I don't see what can be done to stop this
| trend since it's 100% certain it will become ubiquitous.
| jruohonen wrote:
| Wonderful indeed! I don't mind other people making money, but
| this thing is getting out of hands:
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/chatgpt-courses-instruction-...
|
| Not only have YouTubers found the same "business model", but
| now there are also people "educating" other people to "write"
| e-books and use image generators for book covers. Of course,
| you get also the AI generated promotion material with these
| courses.
| _the_inflator wrote:
| If you want to learn more about this business model, search for
| "Low Content Books (on Amazon)".
| low_tech_love wrote:
| That is, all 100% positive reviews except this one, obviously:
| https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/B0BWVH451G/ref=acr_dp...
| sammitrovic wrote:
| Ok, this is funny
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It's what you expect but most of these books are under "Kindle
| Unlimited" where people's expectation for quality is probably
| low (I didn't pay for this particular book so why complain
| about it?) I've been concerned a long time that the "buffet
| model" (going back to cable TV) leads to declining quality.
| jamesgill wrote:
| Amazon reviews were exploited and devalued years ago. I don't
| mean there aren't genuine reviews; I mean they've been gamed to
| the point that they don't really matter anymore. Amazon knows
| this.
| ajonit wrote:
| True that. It is so bad that once I sent a irrefutable proof of
| the seller incentivising reviews, Amazon didn't take any action
| at all.
| camhart wrote:
| > irrefutable proof
|
| Anything coming directly from a customer is probably
| refutable. For example, the incentives I normally see are on
| these little cards they include with the product encouraging
| reviews in exchange for a gift card or something similar.
| What's to stop a competitor from falsely reporting it using a
| fake incentive card they created?
|
| Amazon could take your report then actually open the product
| and see if the incentive card is actually stored with every
| product. But that's a bigger task than just trusting the
| proof you sent in.
| a4isms wrote:
| > Anything coming directly from a customer is probably
| refutable. For example, the incentives I normally see are
| on these little cards they include with the product
| encouraging reviews in exchange for a gift card or
| something similar. What's to stop a competitor from falsely
| reporting it using a fake incentive card they created?
|
| Maybe the two of you have different definitions of
| "irrefutable." If I say, "They ship packages with cards in
| them that offer a gift card in exchange for a five-start
| reviews," I would personally call the presence of such a
| gift card offer, irrefutable proof.
|
| True, my testimony alone is not irrefutable proof, but
| let's compare to a science paper. It says they have proved
| that light's path can be bent by gravity. Well, science
| papers have included outright frauds before, so the paper
| in and of itself is not "irrefutable proof," but the claims
| within it can be refuted by attempting to replicate the
| experiment.
|
| And so it is with the gift-card-offers. A single report or
| tens of thousands of reports are not irrefutable proof, but
| they explain how to replicate the result, and if Amazon
| choose to ignore these reports rather than attempt to
| replicate what they describe, that is on Amazon.
|
| Ultimately, everything a customer reports can be faked.
| Businesses that ignore customer complaints because they
| might be faked, and do so when it "happens to" make them
| money to ignore customer reports... Are not suffering from
| being unable to prove that the reports are correct.
|
| They are suffering from making too much money to want to
| know whether they are complicit in fraudulent behavious on
| the part of their partners.
|
| Yes it is work to find out if the customer is describing an
| irrefutable way of discovering whether the customer is
| telling the truth. It is not the Universe's responsibility
| to make cracking down on fraud easy: It is Amazon's
| responsibility to organize their business around not making
| easy money at the expense of their customers, and if
| cracking down on fraud is too expensive, it is on Amazon to
| change their business model.
|
| "It's too much work to crack down on fraud" ought to be
| rejected as an unacceptable thing to say about any
| business.
| camhart wrote:
| > Amazon didn't take any action at all
|
| This suggests they wanted amazon to accept their
| "irrefutable proof".
|
| I hate fake reviews. I'm not defending them. But the fact
| that literally every site of significant size that offers
| reviews struggles to control fake ones should be a clue
| that it isn't so easy to manage.
|
| Just google/bing "{big site name} fake reviews" and
| you'll find this issue plagues everyone, not just amazon.
| willcipriano wrote:
| > What's to stop a competitor from falsely reporting it
| using a fake incentive card they created?
|
| Order one themselves, open it up to see if it contains the
| card.
| camhart wrote:
| > Amazon could take your report then actually open the
| product and see if the incentive card is actually stored
| with every product. But that's a bigger task than just
| trusting the proof you sent in.
| qzw wrote:
| I have been semi-reliant on FakeSpot to deal with fake reviews,
| but I just ran one of the Tom Lesley books through, and
| FakeSpot gave it a solid A. Looks like I'll have to find a
| better way going forward. Sigh...
| nullsense wrote:
| What happens when you exhaust all avenues and none of them
| work anymore?
|
| Sadly technology has gotten so good that it has actually
| gotten bad.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| I find reviewmeta.com helps a lot. Having said that, it doesn't
| work on these "Tom Lesley" books because they only have fake
| ratings, no reviews (fake or otherwise).
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Unless you know the category or have a trusted brand, Amazon
| has become absolutely junk. Search for something where you
| likely won't know any trusted brands (such as car covers) and
| you'll get 200 results with exactly the same picture but random
| brand names.
|
| All of it is imported crap from Alibaba, of course, and Amazon
| sellers won't even bother customizing the images.
|
| The degradation in quality has been astonishing.
| INGSOCIALITE wrote:
| This is what saddens me. These dropship sellers don't even
| buy one item that they are selling to test, try out, take
| pictures, etc. they just use the alibaba pics and let it rip.
| It's all so tiresome at this point
| tivert wrote:
| > Search for something where you likely won't know any
| trusted brands (such as car covers) and you'll get 200
| results with exactly the same picture but random brand names.
|
| > All of it is imported crap from Alibaba, of course, and
| Amazon sellers won't even bother customizing the images.
|
| Which, by the way, is also _the literal user experience_ of
| AliExpress or Taobao. You forgot to mention widely varying
| prices.
|
| Whenever I see that (or any Chinese on the packaging), it's a
| clue to me to go look for the literal same item on
| AliExpress, usually for a significantly cheaper price (like
| $1.50 + $3 shipping vs $17, to give a recent example).
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Portable-Emergency-Compatible-Re-
| Char...
|
| https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804659044321.html
| 20after4 wrote:
| Amazon reviews and ratings are still useful signal if you know
| how to interpret:
|
| 1. Anything less than 4.6 is probably junk. 2. Ignore the 4-5
| star reviews, only read the 1-3 star reviews 3. Really read
| them. 4. A good product will still generally have 2-3% of
| reviews at 1 star. Less than 2% is a red flag, more than 4% is
| also a red flag.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Or, even better, just don't buy from Amazon. I honestly can't
| think of any advantage to buying from Amazon anymore.
| Ntrails wrote:
| There's still "free" delivery, but honestly I've tried to
| move away from it entirely. I don't succeed entirely, but I
| always try to find another seller I'd rather support
| alexfoo wrote:
| The irony is you can now read the reviews on Amazon and
| make up your mind if you want to but it, and then go buy it
| from somewhere else even, quelle horreur, a local bricks
| and mortar bookshop.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I think the reviews on Amazon are worse than worthless. I
| wouldn't read them to help make my mind up about any
| purchase.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Of all products, a book written by an LLM raises the "fake
| review suspicion" index in my mind.
| mkl95 wrote:
| Some tree was chopped to print this garbage. Think about it.
| anderspitman wrote:
| A huge step forward honestly. Way more efficient than proof of
| work at wasting resources.
| saulpw wrote:
| They're ebooks. So no trees chopped. Just oil burnt.
| mkl95 wrote:
| Top comment has a link to a video of a dead tree version.
| capitainenemo wrote:
| So obviously what he's doing is unethical. The quality of the
| information is pretty bad...
|
| But what about, say, selling a coffee table art book. "Visions of
| the Future" - like 50 good quality scifi images with captions
| generated by, oh, Midjourney?
|
| 15-20% profit margin on a $20 print on demand book... Wouldn't do
| it myself but it doesn't feel wrong? I assume people would pay
| for that just for the art itself in a physical form, it doesn't
| have accuracy requirements or anything..
| throwaway049 wrote:
| Amazon then recommended me the almost-as-prolific Caroline Manta.
| She's either a real person, or the scammer went to trouble of
| putting up a LinkedIn profile saying she's looking for web design
| work. I feel sorry for anyone who didn't know better handing over
| real money for this trash.
| hgsgm wrote:
| For the Kindle Unlimited:
|
| 1. How did it get into the program?
|
| 2. Does it get paid a share everytime someone browses one of its
| books, before realizing it is a fake book?
| low_tech_love wrote:
| So many questions: Are these books copyright by Tom Lesley,
| ChatGPT, OpenAI, ...? Should he share the money with OpenAI, or
| with the internet? Do we need to update the definitions of
| plagiarism? So it goes.
| somenameforme wrote:
| This [1] is, to my knowledge, the latest word on who'd own the
| copyright. And the answer is most likely the author, with the
| second most likely candidate being nobody. In a nutshell, "AI"
| generated content itself cannot be copyrighted since the
| process is carried out by software instead of a human, and
| software cannot be assigned ownership of copyright. However,
| material that is sufficiently recombined in a 'creative way'
| can be copyrighted.
|
| The case/example mentioned is that a single image from image
| generation software cannot be copyrighted, but a series of
| related images being used to tell a story can be copyrighted,
| because it's a human carrying out the creative task.
|
| [1] - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/03/us-issues-
| guidan...
| counttheforks wrote:
| > the answer is most likely the author
|
| So ChatGPT? The book includes unvetted output that was copied
| verbatim (As an language model blablabla)
| layer8 wrote:
| > software cannot be assigned ownership of copyright.
|
| More precisely, only human works are subject to copyright.
| The law simply doesn't apply to works by animals, AIs, or
| anything else, even when they are as creative as a human.
| kube-system wrote:
| However, a human can use animals or AIs (or anything they
| want) as a tool in their human created work.
| layer8 wrote:
| Yes, but copyright requires the human to have significant
| original input into the work for it to be eligible. The
| human can't just delegate to the animal or AI.
| kube-system wrote:
| The degree to which a human has to be creative is very
| minimal. As SCOTUS said in Feist v. Rural:
|
| > "the requisite level of creativity is extremely low;
| even a slight amount will suffice"
|
| Literally throwing paint at a canvas is enough to
| suffice.
|
| Arranging the prerequisite conditions and coaxing a
| monkey into taking a selfie is probably enough as well
| (as long as you don't hire PETA's dumb lawyers who want
| to argue for assignment of the copyright to the monkey)
|
| There's not really enough information to determine
| whether this author would qualify. We don't know how much
| editing he did if any, nor have we seen these specific
| cases tested in a court yet.
| layer8 wrote:
| I think it needs to be evaluated relative to the volume
| of the work. If you take a novel in the public domain and
| just change a few sentences, I don't think you can claim
| copyright for the modified novel.
| kube-system wrote:
| That's true, but the output of something like chatGPT
| isn't an existing work. The author's prompt caused it to
| be created.
|
| I think it will ultimately hinge on whether courts find
| the totality of the process to be creative enough to
| constitute a "modicum of creativity"
|
| My prediction is that courts will eventually rule that
| something like writing a prompt is enough. I think too
| much would be upended to rule otherwise.
| nullsense wrote:
| So the next business model is to simply copy every work
| that isn't copyrightable and put it up for sale yourself.
| Nothing stopping you and you may as well.
|
| Exponential growth!
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Technically, text written by ChatGPT can't be subject to
| copyright, even if said "Tom Lesley" tweaked them.
| circuit10 wrote:
| The tweaking introduces a human element so from my
| understanding that would make it copyrightable
| layer8 wrote:
| Only if a certain threshold of originality is met. It
| probably would have to be more than just a little
| "tweaking".
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| OpenAI (ChatGPT, DALL-E, etc.) explicitly assigns their rights
| to anything generated by their systems to the user.
|
| > OpenAI hereby assigns to you all its right, title and
| interest in and to Output. This means you can use Content for
| any purpose, including commercial purposes such as sale or
| publication, if you comply with these Terms.
| layer8 wrote:
| This doesn't mean that copyright law applies to AI-created
| works. OpenAI may have no rights here that they can assign,
| due to lack of human authorship. See also https://www.federal
| register.gov/documents/2023/03/16/2023-05....
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > This doesn't mean that copyright law applies to AI-
| created works.
|
| I didn't say that it did, just that OpenAI disclaims ALL
| rights (including, but not limited to copyright).
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| There maybe some need to legally clarify how much input is
| necessary for Tom to claim copyright.
|
| ChatGPT can't, legally speaking only humans are capable of
| claiming copyright. In the monkey selfie case a few years ago
| it was determined animals and machines can't claim copyright.
| In cases where there is no human author, the work is public
| domain.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Isn't there a difference between a monkey taking a picture
| (no human author involved) and a person using a tool
| (ChatGPT) to help them realise their original work?
|
| If I made a drawing with one of those old plastic spirograph
| tools I'd never wonder if the copyright was mine or the
| spirograph's.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| Sure, even though photos are machine made, Humans claim
| copyright because they had artistic input on composition
| and framing. Between fully AI generated stuff, and human
| artistic input prompts causing output there is a line where
| the results go from copyrightable to not copyrightable. The
| question is where is that line, legally.
|
| To me GPT is either very close to or already crosses that
| line.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| I feel like I have to wrestle with GPT to get the output
| I'm imagining a lot more than I ever have done with a
| camera.
| AraceliHarker wrote:
| Even if an AI could write a Zadie Smith-esque novel, or a Steven
| Pinker-esque science book, I wouldn't want to pay a dollar for
| that.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Tom Lesley is a pseudonym for Martin Shkreli or some other person
| hiding their identity.
| thih9 wrote:
| Is it legal to publish books with content copied from chatgpt
| output?
|
| Is it possible to prove (in a legal sense) that this content
| comes from chatgpt?
| topkai22 wrote:
| I'm not a lawyer, but I really doubt it'd be illegal in the US
| at least.
|
| Just creating a book from ChatGPT is not against its terms of
| service, as " OpenAI hereby assigns to you all its right, title
| and interest in and to Output. This means you can use Content
| for any purpose, including commercial purposes such as sale or
| publication, if you comply with these Terms." What would be
| against the TOS is claiming that the output is human generated,
| so theoretically OpenAI could sue.
|
| The courts have recently held that AI generated images are not
| copyrightable, so these "books" are basically just public
| domain content (where they aren't directly copying existing
| human generated content). It's not illegal to republish public
| domain content as your own.
|
| The thing that might be straight up illegal here is the
| reviews. Those appear to be completely fake and probably
| constitute fraud.
| vkou wrote:
| > OpenAI hereby assigns to you all its right, title and
| interest in and to Output
|
| How can it do that? ChatGPT isn't capable of owning or
| assigning copyright, because only humans can produce
| copyrighted works (or enter into copyright assignment
| contracts - typical in employment contracts), and ChatGPT
| isn't human.
|
| It's giving you something that it doesn't own.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| That's a standard phrase to make lawyers happy. It means
| what whatever else happens and whoever else may claim title
| to the work OpenAI won't come after you. They are free to
| put this in their terms of service; many companies will
| refuse to use it without such a disclaimer.
|
| Where it gets entertaining is in Section 7.
| Indemnification; Disclaimer of Warranties; Limitations on
| Liability, which contains the following gem:
| (a) Indemnity. You will defend, indemnify, and hold
| harmless us, our affiliates, and our personnel, from
| and against any claims, losses, and expenses
| (including attorneys' fees) arising from or relating to
| your use of the Services, including your Content,
| products or services you develop or offer in
| connection with the Services, and your breach of these
| Terms or violation of applicable law. [0]
|
| Unlike normal Terms of Service where the vendor accepts
| liability and/or indemnifies the user against IP violations
| or other issues, this clause turns things around. If
| there's a problem _you the user_ must mount a legal defense
| for OpenAI. By using Chat GPT you are enrolling in the
| legion of its defenders.
|
| Who says contract law isn't fun?
|
| [0] https://openai.com/policies/terms-of-use
|
| Edit: pedantic wordsmithing
| low_tech_love wrote:
| Very good question; the original review that prompted (pun
| intended) me to search the author up certainly proves that at
| least one of his books are from ChatGPT:
| https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/B0BWVH451G/ref=acr_dp...
|
| And obviously he did not really even attempt to hide anything.
| Whether it's legal or not: I don't think we have a clear, 100%
| obvious understanding of the consequences right now, but I'm
| pretty sure OpenAI couldn't care less. Suing people who use
| ChatGPT to publish meaningless books would surely not do them
| any good. Who else might care enough?
| inetsee wrote:
| The Copyright Office has decreed that AI generated content
| cannot be Copyrighted. If these books have a copyright listing
| then they are a violation of the rules. I doubt if the "author"
| is at risk for legal repurcussions, beyond not being able to
| sue for copyright violation.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| I have yet to see a legal argument that says the output of
| ChatGPT is free from derivative works claims. So you can't
| assert ownership of the output, but that doesn't mean someone
| else can't assert rights on the grounds of derivative works.
|
| It is one of the reasons I don't see Copilot going anywhere.
| Any company that uses it can't assert ownership over their
| own IP, and if Copilot accidently reproduces a chunk of
| training data verbatim then someone else can.
| circuit10 wrote:
| I doubt many codebases are 100% generated by Copilot with
| no human input, and it's not like having some Copilot
| snippets in your code is going to invalidate the copyright
| on the whole thing... I think that's like being worried
| that writing parts of a book in a public domain font is
| going to invalidate the copyright on it
|
| The copying verbatim thing is valid though, although they
| have mitigations against that
| kube-system wrote:
| There is nuance in the statement that you're referring to.
| Works created by an AI are not copyrightable, but works
| created by humans who use AI tools are copyrightable.
|
| Non-humans do not have copy rights from the things they
| create. However, humans have copy rights even when they use
| tools.
| throwaway049 wrote:
| Imagine suing because someone ripped off your crappy ai-
| generated book: The court awards the plaintiff damages of 1
| cent.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| The "author" can't sue for copying? That's probably pretty
| safe; who is going to want to _copy_ one of these books?
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| It is an interesting hack, buy 5 star reviews and use ChatGPT to
| write books. Amazon "print on demand" service to make physical
| books for you.
|
| I wish folks like this would do a transparent web site on how
| much they made on the scam[1]
|
| [1] It is a scam because we know ChatGPT _will_ produce
| authoritative prose that is 100% provably not correct, so these
| aren 't "books" so much as they are "printouts" being sold as
| books.
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