Amateur mushroom pickers have been urged to avoid foraging books sold on Amazon that appear to have been written by artificial intelligence chatbots.

Amazon has become a marketplace for AI-produced tomes that are being passed off as having been written by humans, with travel books among the popular categories for fake work.

Now a number of books have appeared on the online retailer’s site offering guides to wild mushroom foraging that also seem to be written by chatbots. The titles include “Wild Mushroom Cookbook: form [sic] forest to gourmet plate, a complete guide to wild mushroom cookery” and “The Supreme Mushrooms Books Field Guide of the South-West”.

  • kescusay@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Someone’s going to die following one of these books. If the people who created them can be identified, there should be harsh criminal penalties for doing it.

    • Jumper775@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      If they are selling it on Amazon Amazon can totally figure out who they are. If someone does following it and charges are pressed they will be found.

      • Kbobabob@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It would be a fine that could be paid with about an hour’s worth of income.

        Edit: Downvoting because you don’t like the truth?

        • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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          1 year ago

          I’m a big believer in changing laws so that when a company commits a serious offense, the individuals responsible end up serving time in prison. Fines are bullshit. If you’re gonna wish for things that aren’t gonna happen anyway, you may as well dream big.