NBC spotlights AI books published under real authors’ names on Amazon

AI-generated books are being published on Amazon under the names of real authors, NBC News reported Oct. 3. The segment followed author Tara West, who found fake books attached to her Amazon author profile and worked to have them removed. NBC described the practice as the rise of “parasite authors,” framing it as AI-driven impersonation of writers’ work. The report adds a direct author-profile impersonation case to the concerns about AI-generated Amazon titles that this publication covered in August. Separate reporting has documented other deceptive AI books on the marketplace. In July, 9to5Mac reported that New York Times technology journalist Kashmir Hill found a false biography of herself on Amazon and concluded it was one of thousands of AI-written biographies offered for sale there. That book was listed under the name John Crane Miller, whose profile presented him as a biographer but used a widely circulated stock photograph and listed 10 biographies released in a single week. The fake biography of Hill was described as wildly inaccurate, while an AI-biography creator told Hill that ChatGPT could have produced such a book in a few hours. The cases differ in form: West found books using her real author profile, while Hill was the subject of a biography credited to a fictitious-seeming author.