<
https://www.404media.co/ai-generated-slop-is-already-in-your-public-library-3/>
"Low quality books that appear to be AI generated are making their way into
public libraries via their digital catalogs, forcing librarians who are already
understaffed to either sort through a functionally infinite number of books to
determine what is written by humans and what is generated by AI, or to spend
taxpayer dollars to provide patrons with information they don’t realize is
AI-generated.
Public libraries primarily use two companies to manage and lend ebooks: Hoopla
and OverDrive, the latter of which people may know from its borrowing app,
Libby. Both companies have a variety of payment options for libraries, but
generally libraries get access to the companies’ catalog of books and pay for
customers to be able to borrow that book, with different books having different
licenses and prices. A key difference is that with OverDrive, librarians can
pick and choose which books in OverDrive’s catalog they want to give their
customers the option of borrowing. With Hoopla, librarians have to opt into
Hoopla’s entire catalog, then pay for whatever their customers choose to borrow
from that catalog. The only way librarians can limit what Hoopla books their
customers can borrow is by setting a limit on the price of books. For example,
a library can use Hoopla but make it so their customers can only borrow books
that cost the library $5 per use.
On one hand, Hoopla’s gigantic catalog, which includes ebooks, audio books, and
movies, is a selling point because it gives librarians access to more for
cheaper price. On the other hand, making librarians buy into the entire catalog
means that a customer looking for a book about how to diet for a healthier
liver might end up borrowing
Fatty Liver Diet Cookbook: 2000 Days of Simple
and Flavorful Recipes for a Revitalized Liver. The book was authored by Magda
Tangy, who has no online footprint, and who has an AI-generated profile picture
on Amazon, where her books are also for sale. Note the earring that is only on
one ear and seems slightly deformed. A spokesperson for deepfake detection
company Reality Defender said that according to their platform, the headshot is
85 percent likely to be AI-generated.
The book, which consists mostly of recipes and includes a disclaimer that the
author and publisher “are not experts in the discussed topics,” didn’t include
any dangerous information as far as I could tell, but appears to be
AI-generated based on its stilted prose and formatting, consisting of summaries
broken up with bolded subheadings common in outputs from LLMs like ChatGPT."
Via
Garbage Day: The only way things go viral in 2025
https://www.garbageday.email/p/the-only-way-things-go-viral-in-2025
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
