Amid growing concerns over AI-generated content, Amazon.com Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AMZN) reported decision to retain books purportedly written by artificial intelligence under the name of a human author has sparked a debate on the boundaries of authorship and the responsibility of online platforms.
What Happened: Journalist, author, and professor Jane Friedman has taken to Twitter (now X) to share an alarming discovery.
She allegedly came across a series of books on Amazon that were eerily aligned with her areas of expertise.
With titles like "Publishing Power: Navigating Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing," these books carried her name as the author. However, Friedman said that she neither wrote nor published these works.
Digging deeper, she realized that these books were purportedly authored by another individual named "Jane Friedman." She believed these books to be the product of an AI-powered text generation process.
Disturbed by this discovery, Friedman filed a complaint with Amazon, pointing out that these books were falsely using her name and reputation without consent. Friedman has written about this in detail on her blog, you can read it here.
However, Amazon reportedly requested trademark registration numbers to substantiate her claim. Since she lacked a trademark for her name, Friedman said that she was told the books would not be removed from the e-commerce giant's website.
The Author's Guild intends to take up the matter with Amazon.
Amazon did not immediately respond to Benzinga's request for comments.
Why It's Important: Around mid-February this year, Amazon's Kindle e-book story allegedly hosted over 200 books in which OpenAI's ChatGPT was listed as an author or co-author.
Meanwhile, in an unprecedented move, Hollywood has been witnessing a double strike from actors and writers for the first time in over six decades.
Both unions advocate for compensation throughout every production phase and have voiced apprehensions regarding incorporating AI in the scriptwriting process.