A new scam mounted using artificial intelligence. According to information from New York Times transmitted by Point, AI-generated travel guides are traded on Amazon. A scam of which several consumers in the United States have been victims.
The American newspaper recounts the misadventure of Amy Kolsky, an American who planned to visit France. To properly prepare for her stay, she searched Amazon for a travel guide, before ordering a well-rated (4.4/5) book, supposedly written by a renowned author, Mike Steves. At $16.99, compared to $25.49 for a guide like Lonely Planet, the price of the book was also especially attractive.
But once the guide is received, Amy Kolsky becomes disillusioned. The tourist book contains little relevant information, connects the banalities and is repeated throughout the pages. Not to mention, it doesn’t offer any itinerary. “It looked like the guy just went online, he copied a bunch of information from Wikipedia and pasted it,” Amy told the New York Times. york times.
Fake Positive Reviews
Using artificial intelligence-generated content detection software, the American newspaper combed through the travel guide and the result leaves little room for doubt as 35 passages in the book scored 100/100. Which means they were probably generated by an AI.
Also, the New York Times she realized that the author, Mike Steves, could not be found on the Internet and that his biography was probably fictitious. Especially since the photo of him contained anomalies that suggested it too would have been created by an AI. Finally, the positive reviews of the guide on Amazon were false.
Dozens of books of this type are for sale on Amazon. Asked about this issue, the platform assures that it invests “a lot of time and resources so that its guidelines are followed and books that do not comply with them are eliminated.”
Source: BFM TV
