Amazon is crawling with travel guides written by AI -- vague, crappy, and pushed up in search results by astroturfed fake five-star reviews: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/05/travel/amazon-guidebooks-artificial-intelligence.html?unlocked_article_code=Gmcb6fkRXSAX7JUdbTpFyhH1lSBWBcI0RuiXgcku3gVTdQV7s_SPvl1tKw76F_txTehAmHdU0bZ3PUoPyH0h-dybeb8_bGL7UzysZynt-SFcx9yByC4wr37_65cVodjr_Z-sRcqUfioeOsUAKJpEECejhG2SlL4jPCoaBG8PFnu_YLKDXA0hkzvhrJnGuD5kw59N8Bz7T7D7UOeJXLkowJnnoB6IDt6bHn6XiBvlH--t6M_9xmGCkNlYdtiiScdbS3ebGG5C3xKkCxwacaT96yLi9NK5dx9YHwhHSPdoVJPqslvVGAwQFvpSQvDvgHZGOFxW09EeUVAHYZl6uI-aSYS0_UfYhcXjDi6J2-M1oFlpWg&smid=url-share

That's a "gift" link so you don't need to be a New York Times subscriber to read it

It's a great investigation, and highlights the real problem, which is ...

... unsurprisingly by now, Amazon seemingly does little-to-nothing to stop this

The site is just soiled top to bottom with fake crap in every category

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nostr:npub1typ5we79rr527q30467hfz8ptfy0h8gxpmfn7j64ak6pk6pv4rfszzc8hh The reporter seemed a bit credulous when using a proprietary AI detection tool to detect what text was written by AI or not. Good marketing for Originality.ai I guess tho... (aside: what is it with silicon valley and quirky TLDs?)

I personally prefer the "Zoe" test, where I read something and decide by myself if it's worthless garbage or not without asking an AI at all.

Overall good article though.

nostr:npub1typ5we79rr527q30467hfz8ptfy0h8gxpmfn7j64ak6pk6pv4rfszzc8hh the entire amazon experience is so openly hostile other than the incredible logistics backend - if someone else can send things to my door without hassle, they’ll have my money instantly.

nostr:npub1typ5we79rr527q30467hfz8ptfy0h8gxpmfn7j64ak6pk6pv4rfszzc8hh Why anyone uses them for books where there are so many independents online, and bookshop.org, I don't understand.

nostr:npub1typ5we79rr527q30467hfz8ptfy0h8gxpmfn7j64ak6pk6pv4rfszzc8hh One of my students used some of this garbage writing for a reference in a research paper. I had to go find it to believe that the shoddy information came from and actual "published" source.