Amateur mushroom pickers have been urged to avoid foraging books sold on Amazon that appear to have been written by artificial intelligence chatbots.

Amazon has become a marketplace for AI-produced tomes that are being passed off as having been written by humans, with travel books among the popular categories for fake work.

Now a number of books have appeared on the online retailer’s site offering guides to wild mushroom foraging that also seem to be written by chatbots. The titles include “Wild Mushroom Cookbook: form [sic] forest to gourmet plate, a complete guide to wild mushroom cookery” and “The Supreme Mushrooms Books Field Guide of the South-West”.

    • Breezy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I thought that was duncen trussell on the cover. I figured a book about mushrooms seems like something he’d make.

    • dx1@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I have one of his (Mushrooms of North America?) that’s about an inch and a half thick and gives a comprehensive, more or less academic introduction to the field. Read it 10 or so years back and I’m not dead yet, so.

      • Tatters@feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        Written by an AI ten years ago? I didn’t think they were that advanced back then.

    • Urist@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      Incredible. I wish I lived in the western US so I had a reason to buy this book. I kind of just want it on a poster.