Kindle’s getting scammier

For the last couple of years, I have been keeping track of books that were potentially written by AI that my Kindle saw fit to advertise to me on the lock-screen page. As I wrote at the top of each installment of Kindle Books Written by AIs,

“[…] This is a view into what people are reading or what Amazon would like people to be reading or … whatever. I simply observe and catalog.”

Until recently, it was kind of interesting because the provenance of the content could have gone either way: it might have been written by AI but it was also perfectly plausible that the content had been written by an earnest dolt who was utterly unaware of how language is to be used in book form. As I’ll show below, this series might be finding its ignominious end as the tsunami of AI content overwhelms my capacity or desire to track it.

First off, there’s just this sloppy botshit that’s just the same kind of scamming that we’ve always seen, but produced about 100x faster than it used to be. The following books will help you achieve financial success (pyramid scheme), own the members of the other silo, launch into financial orbit with crypto (more funneling your money up the pyramid), or gain serenity through the power of your own mind, which will somehow be both feeble enough to buy the book and believe that it will help and be powerful enough to save your soul.

60 days to $60,000- a plan for achieving your dreamsThe DNA Lottery- How science shows that liberals are wrong about everythingTransformers by Crypto- Game, Gamification, Identi…Design transformed by crypto technologies and Web3Unlocking the Power of Mindfulness

Then, there are these weird books that are just amalgams of AI-generated anime-like wifus, or comic-book hot moms, or fantasy warrior-princesses combined with a title that doesn’t even make sense. The “Bedtime Story for Kids and Adults” was very, very popular and was the suffix for a dozen other titles that I didn’t even both to photograph.

The Quest for the Fruit of Wisdom- Bedtime Story for Kids and AdultsA Brushstroke of GratitudeThe Dragon and the Mother

This next set comprises what look like the same titles but with minor variations on the pictures that accompany them. I just lumped all 16 of them into one, giant grid since they seem to almost mesmerizingly blend into one another along a sort of eldritch gradient that slides you inexorably toward a mindless capitulation to the algorithm, where you’ll not only buy all of the different copies, you will read them all—and you won’t even notice that they’re all the same. That is how you will know that you have achieved inner peace and perfect integration into what we are going to have to grudgingly accept is our culture now.

The Heroic Hedgehog − soloThe Heroic Hedgehog − with birdThe Quest for Healing − FairyThe Quest for Healing − OwlThe Spirit of Mother's DayThe Animal Mother's Day SurpriseThe magical adventures of a mouseAnimated Memories − The Quest to Save Our SchoolAnimated Memories − The Quest to Save Our School 2Ghostly Secrets- A Novel, The Dark Secrets of the Haunted AsylumJourney to Graduation − A Boy's Adventure to Reach GraduationSchool for Young Detectives − Students Quest for Graduation HonorsThe End Of Year Tournament − The Graduation GamesThe Graduation Ball − A Group's Battle against EnvyThe Graduation Ball − A Group's Battle against Envy 2The Graduation Ball − A Group's Battle against Envy 3

At this point, I stopped documenting or individually evaluating the titles because they’re all the same. At least with the prior couple of years of content, I could reassure myself that the author had put at least as much effort into producing their monstrosity as I would put into making fun of it, but that’s sadly no longer the case. This is pure botshit, untouched by human hands until someone accidentally one-clicks “buy” on it, almost certainly to scratch an OCD itch that is more related to a collector’s mania than to an actual desire to read these works.