What an odd way to start the morning. It was 7 a.m. I was only on my third cup of tea of the day, and already bleary-eyed from the heat. I opened my laptop to set up a few ads to run on Amazon (I meant to do it last night, but I spent the evening browsing photographs of the Adelaide River), and stumbled across what appears to be an AI generated version of Book 1: London, being sold on Amazon. It appears as if they’ve chucked the text into an AI app, and asked it to rewrite it. The result is almost gibberish, but not quite. It’s as if the book’s been translated into French, then translated back by someone who doesn’t speak English, using a dictionary.
I’ve reported this infringement to Amazon, so hopefully the matter will be swiftly resolved.
This is my book, the one and only original story with oodles of lovely reviews that launched another 35 books, and has been the cause of so much entertainment (for both me and you).
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00FGV3X7A/
This is the book that appears to have been written by a machine
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Surviving-Evacuation-Annotated-Frank-Tayell/dp/B0BQ9RT4M4/
What’s oddest of all, though, is that they’ve tagged me as the author. I don’t know if this was a prank, performance art, or if there’s a way of having an unlisted, secret author to whom royalties would go. Sadly, as the book has a sales rank in the UK it appears there have been some sales. (My sympathies if that was you. If you did buy this in paperback, do let me know.)
If this had happened to Strike a Match, I’d assume ChatGPT had gained sentience, been inspired by the story of an AI generated apocalypse, and had created this as a subtle warning I should write about friendlier artificial intelligences else I’d get it in the neck come the robot uprising.
I’ve been paying a fair bit of attention to the role-out of AI, and how it might impact the creative arts, but I don’t think it’ll be as great as some fear. These programmes aren’t sentient. They can’t create anything truly new, only find similarities based on other published work. To give an example, I can cite what I’ve been writing for the last few days. In the more recent books in the Surviving the Evacuation series, I’ve made a few mentions of how there was a Canadian evacuation to Vancouver Island, and then from there into the Pacific. I had an event I won’t describe, but which would play out over 3 chapters. I could tell it from the point of view of Kim, but it would be quite similar to the first few chapters of this book. On Tuesday, with a thunder-clap of realisation, I thought ‘Why not write a flashback, set it in the Pacific, in a shanty town occupied by the Canadian refugees, and make Tess Qwong the star?’ Brilliant, I thought. Of course, then I had to pick a place. It had to make sense geographically, being somewhere an airlift from Canada could reach, but somewhere sparsely populated, where life would be hard. Most importantly, it needed to have a cool name. I found the coolest: Humpty Doo. It’s a town south of Darwin in the Northern Territories. When I saw the town’s famous statue, the story just fell into place.
An AI wouldn’t have had the flash of inspiration. An AI wouldn’t think to link back to Tess Qwong and the practical difficulties of maintaining law and order after the apocalypse. An AI couldn’t see a place called Humpty Doo and know it was the perfect fit for the story.
I doubt I’m the only author to whom this has happened, nor that it will be the last time, so do be vigilant when buying new books. I know I will be.
Now, before the weather gets too warm, I’m going to pour my sixth cup of tea over some ice, and take a walk to the wild meadow on the other side of the motorway, where I will think about crocodiles.
Have a great day, Frank :)
Edited to add: The content seems to now have been removed, so I’ve attached two screenshots, one of the product listing, the other of the first page of the book (I bought a copy for referencing in case the fake book appears on other websites)
