AI-generated cookbooks are flooding the market

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AI-generated books are inundating the market, resulting in Amazon limiting self-published Kindle e-books to three per day, according to AI Business. Unlike food images, though, it doesn’t seem that people consider cookbooks written by an AI chatbot more enticing than those written by humans.

Mashable uncovered a spate of “probable AI-generated” slow cooker cookbooks on Amazon after investigative journalist Matthew Kupfer brought the issue to light in a March 18 thread on X with 3.3 million views at the time of writing.

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After receiving The Complete Crockpot Cookbook for Beginners by Luisa Florence, Kupfer posted, “This week, my wife and I are celebrating our anniversary. My parents ordered us a very practical, thoughtful gift on Amazon: a crockpot and a crockpot cookbook. We’re thrilled. There’s just one minor issue: I’m pretty sure the cookbook was written by an AI.”

Kupfer isn’t the only one to suspect something was amiss with the book. One verified purchaser, Alan, commented with a two-star review of the 2023 edition on Amazon, “The dishes are so bizarre that I’d be really surprised if any slow cook beginners would make even 1/4 of these recipes.” Another, David Roberts, posted with a one-star review, “I would give this zero stars if I could,” adding, “This whole listing is so misleading that it should be removed. If there was a publisher I would complain to them but it is self-published. I have returned my copy for a refund. Author should be ashamed of themselves.” (AI, of course, is incapable of experiencing emotions, so if responsible, it should come out of this unscathed.)

The book doesn’t seem to have been written by a human, Kupfer posted, citing lines such as, “What is Crock pot?” and, “This electrical cooking equipment is used to make meals, particularly when you want to leave your cooking uncontrolled for hours” as examples of unnatural language.

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As Kupfer highlighted in his X thread, Florence, with 25 titles listed on Amazon, has little presence outside of the online retailer. The same is true of Florence’s photo. Google’s reverse image search only turned up her author page on Amazon and posts related to Kupfer’s thread. Then there’s the image quality, with its wonky background, missing shoulder and mismatched earrings.

Unlike the flood of AI-generated books targeting beginner foragers this past fall, slow cooker cookbooks are less likely to contain lethal advice, but they are misleading and potentially money- and time-wasters. Artificial intelligence is making it easier for disingenuous sellers to impersonate authors with copycat books and release nonsensical recipes that chatbots repurpose from creators.

Reviews for Florence’s most popular title, The Ultimate Anti-Inflammatory Cookbook for Beginners, include complaints that a chickpea and quinoa veggie bowl recipe neglects to list chickpeas and quinoa in the ingredient list. As verified purchaser SH posted with their one-star review, “This isn’t an isolated example — every page is filled with this type of nonsense.”

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In its recently updated Kindle guidelines, Amazon distinguishes between AI-generated and AI-assisted content. Authors must disclose the former but not the latter.

Amazon spokesperson James Drummond told The Register in response to the Crock-Pot cookbook fiasco: “We have a robust set of methods that help us proactively detect content that violates our guidelines, whether AI-generated or not. We both proactively prevent books from being listed as well as remove books that do not adhere to those guidelines, including content that creates a poor customer experience.

“Anyone can use the ‘Report an Issue’ link on a book’s detail page on Amazon to report content they believe is inappropriate for sale. We are committed to reviewing everything that is referred to us.”

This week, my wife and I are celebrating our anniversary. My parents ordered us a very practical, thoughtful gift on Amazon: a crockpot and a crockpot cookbook. We’re thrilled. There’s just one minor issue: I’m pretty sure the cookbook was written by an AI… 🧵 — Matthew Kupfer (@Matthew_Kupfer) March 19, 2024

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