A New Frontier for Travel Scammers: AI-Generated Guidebooks (nytimes.com) 15
Shoddy guidebooks, promoted with deceptive reviews, have flooded Amazon in recent months. Their authors claim to be renowned travel writers.
But do they even exist?
The New York Times: The books are the result of a swirling mix of modern tools: A.I. apps that can produce text and fake portraits; websites with a seemingly endless array of stock photos and graphics; self-publishing platforms -- like Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing -- with few guardrails against the use of A.I.; and the ability to solicit, purchase and post phony online reviews, which runs counter to Amazon's policies and may soon face increased regulation from the Federal Trade Commission. The use of these tools in tandem has allowed the books to rise near the top of Amazon search results and sometimes garner Amazon endorsements such as "#1 Travel Guide on Alaska." A recent Amazon search for the phrase "Paris Travel Guide 2023," for example, yielded dozens of guides with that exact title. One, whose author is listed as Stuart Hartley, boasts, ungrammatically, that it is "Everything you Need to Know Before Plan a Trip to Paris."
The book itself has no further information about the author or publisher. It also has no photographs or maps, though many of its competitors have art and photography easily traceable to stock-photo sites. More than 10 other guidebooks attributed to Stuart Hartley have appeared on Amazon in recent months that rely on the same cookie-cutter design and use similar promotional language. The Times also found similar books on a much broader range of topics, including cooking, programming, gardening, business, crafts, medicine, religion and mathematics, as well as self-help books and novels, among many other categories. Amazon declined to answer a series of detailed questions about the books.
But do they even exist?
The New York Times: The books are the result of a swirling mix of modern tools: A.I. apps that can produce text and fake portraits; websites with a seemingly endless array of stock photos and graphics; self-publishing platforms -- like Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing -- with few guardrails against the use of A.I.; and the ability to solicit, purchase and post phony online reviews, which runs counter to Amazon's policies and may soon face increased regulation from the Federal Trade Commission. The use of these tools in tandem has allowed the books to rise near the top of Amazon search results and sometimes garner Amazon endorsements such as "#1 Travel Guide on Alaska." A recent Amazon search for the phrase "Paris Travel Guide 2023," for example, yielded dozens of guides with that exact title. One, whose author is listed as Stuart Hartley, boasts, ungrammatically, that it is "Everything you Need to Know Before Plan a Trip to Paris."
The book itself has no further information about the author or publisher. It also has no photographs or maps, though many of its competitors have art and photography easily traceable to stock-photo sites. More than 10 other guidebooks attributed to Stuart Hartley have appeared on Amazon in recent months that rely on the same cookie-cutter design and use similar promotional language. The Times also found similar books on a much broader range of topics, including cooking, programming, gardening, business, crafts, medicine, religion and mathematics, as well as self-help books and novels, among many other categories. Amazon declined to answer a series of detailed questions about the books.
AI is largely a scam + 2000s offshoring craze (Score:3)
If you're paying people to generate content, you want it to be accurate if its informative or compelling if it's fiction. AI doesn't know the difference between completely false information or correct information. It also doesn't yet know if something is well written or not. It doesn't know the difference between Wonder Woman 1984 and Avengers End Game. It has no clue if it's telling you the history of France or Narnia.
Generative AI is bullshit.
It has no mainstream business use case, but a FUCK TON of scam use cases.
I'm also worried we'll see a repeat of the offshoring craze. Stupid as shit MBAs and executives were tripping over themselves to offshore as much of their business to India in the early 2000s. Executives from Tata, Infosys, and many others were luring junior executives into contracts by wining and dining them and making obviously false promises, but the execs were too ambitious and stupid to see it was too good to be true. The "sales concierges" specifically avoided targeting execs who were senior enough to pass or smart enough to ask follow up questions. Without a doubt, there are many things that can be done better or cheaper somewhere far away, but instead of evaluating analytically, they just believed the salespeople.
The junior execs, typically very young, pushed their hardest, knowing that if it works out, they get promoted and are considered the glorious future of the company, making it a global entity. If they failed, they just found another job elsewhere, enjoyed being wined and dined both locally and on site visits in India by the consulting company and touted their "global experience." I saw it many times. The problem is that when things started failing, the execs were backed into a corner and had to push harder because admitting failure would be career suicide. That exec bet their career on taking their mid-size regional employer to be global workforce. The consulting company had a fierce advocate in that exec who was pushing on behalf of his/her interests instead of those of the company.
When I hear about all these AI startups, I worry the same thing will happen. We'll get slick salespeople telling you how many people you can replace with their worthless generative AI tools. I am sure they're telling customers AI can write your product documentation and marketing websites for you.
If you're paying money today to produce things that can "potentially" be done by Generative AI, you're doing so because you care about accuracy. Mistakes result in pissed-off customers, financial loss, or lawsuits. That leaves out all legit sources of business...the only people who want to write content, but don't care if it's accurate are scammers looking to fool people into thinking they're a real business for their phising scheme, false cypto exchange, fake reviews, counterfeit product, or similar scam.
This generative AI fad can't die soon enough.
Re: (Score:2)
It's clear that you hold strong opinions about generative AI and its potential applications. Your concerns touch upon several valid points, including the accuracy of generated content, the limitations of AI's understanding, and the potential for misuse or overselling of AI capabilities.
Generative AI, indeed, has its limitations. While it can create content, it lacks true understanding and discernment that humans possess. It cannot distinguish nuances, context, or the authenticity required in various situati
Well, at least they aren't Hungarian phrasebooks (Score:2)
Hungarian phrasebook sketch [youtu.be]
Wait, there's more... (Score:1)
The Stuart Hartley examples have disappeared but looks like he may have more than one name. Search on "Everything you Need to Know Before Plan a Trip to Paris" to get other possible examples. One author is especially prolific putting out 2023 titles.
My quick guide to travel guidebooks (Score:5, Informative)
The best overall are Rough Guides and Lonely Planet. I've been leaning a bit more towards LP in recent years but have used both and gotten really good info out of both. Be aware of one thing. Some of the recommendations can be highly subjective for smaller hotels/hostels though and one writer's "This is the greatest hostel on the entire planet!" may be your "This is without a doubt the worst hostel I've ever been in". Independent research on smaller hotels/hostels might be a good idea to confirm that a place the guidebook raved about is actually as good as they claim.
Below that I would rate the DK books. They have tons of photos, which can be extremely helpful in figuring out what to do, but these guidebook often lack basic "How to get from point A to point B" transportation information and their restaurant and hotel recommendations tend to be higher end. I would really not recommend these guys as your only guidebook but they can be helpful in conjunction with RG or LP guidebooks.
Below that are Fodor (Really aimed at rich people and last time I used one, no photos at all) and Frommer's, but there are places a bit off the beaten path where they may be your only choices. Everybody else I'm a bit leery of, but as long as you aren't getting a self published book that's just a Wikipedia dump, you should be OK. I wouldn't buy anything that I couldn't return and for no name publisher books, try to find reviews as other customers will tell you if it's just a Wikipedia dump or AI generated.
PR & marketing... (Score:3)
Fake travel guides go back to ancient times. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
More recently, people would publish books on Amazon that were nothing more than Wikipedia pages printed out.
Herodotus (Score:2)
Give him a read and see for yourself. Thucydides (a contemporary) accused him of making up stories, and reading it with a modern eye tells us Thucydides had a point.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
He is, but consider that we only got what we did due to his being disgraced in the service of Athens. Otherwise, we might not even have what we have.
It's interesting to juxtapose his situation with say, Daniel Ellsberg, or Smedley Butler, who basically ended their careers by speaking out against the foolishness of their times.
Re: (Score:2)
The innuendos, threats, slanders, and visions of loot could have been cribbed from the debate preceding the Iraq War.
AI + AR/VR = reality! (Score:2)
This story is really, really funny. I recently had to return counterfeit cologne that I purchased from Ama
Sounds like a good idea (Score:2)
A lot of the books (including travel books) that are written by "humans" are plain garbage too. AI has just helped accelerate the pace of garbage book generation, is that what this is about? Is that what these "human authors" are complaining about?