A study released by a leading artificial intelligence discovery company found that thanks to ginkgo “memory-enhancing tinctures,” fennel “tummy-soothing syrups” and citrus immunity gummies, artificial intelligence “slops” are being used for herbal medicine.
Originality.aiwhich offers its tools to universities and businesses, says it scanned 558 titles published in Amazon's herbal medicine subcategory between January and September this year and found that 82% of the books were “likely to have been written” by artificial intelligence.
“This is a damning expose of the vast amount of unlabeled, unverified, untested, likely AI content that has completely invaded our lives. [Amazon’s] platform,” wrote Michael Freiman, author of the study.
“There's a huge amount of herbal research going on right now that is complete rubbish,” said Sue Sprung, a medical herbalist from Liverpool. “The AI wouldn't know how to sift through all this junk, all the garbage, it would make absolutely no difference. It would lead people astray.”
One of the books apparently written by artificial intelligence is The Natural Healing Guide., is a #1 bestseller in Amazon's skincare, aromatherapy, and herbal subcategories. The introduction touts the book as a “toolkit for self-confidence,” urging readers to “look within” for solutions.
The author of The Natural Healing Guide is Luna Philby, whose Amazon page describes her as “a 35-year-old herbalist from the coastal town of Byron Bay, Australia” and founder of the My Harmony Herb brand. Sarah Winn, founder of Wildcraft Journal, calls the book “a resource and an inspiration.”
However, neither Luna Filby, My Harmony Herb, Wildcraft Journal, nor Sarah Wynn appear to have an online presence other than the book's Amazon page – a sign, according to Fryman, that they may not exist. The Guardian was unable to find any evidence of the pair's existence. Originality.ai's tool flagged available text samples as being AI-generated with “100% confidence.”
Originality.ai's research found several red flags pointing to potential AI-generated herbal content, including widespread use of leaf emojis and nature-themed creator names such as Rose, Fern and Clove.
At least 29 books, apparently created by artificial intelligence, also mention the work of controversial herbalists Barbara O'Neill and Alfredo Bowman, who both promoted unproven treats for cancer.
These books are part of a larger trend unverified AI content sold on Amazon. Last year, amateur mushroom pickers were warned to avoid collecting books sold on the platform that appear to be written by chatbots and contain dubious advice on how to distinguish a deadly mushroom from an edible one.
Dan Conway, CEO of the Publishers Association, said his organization is calling on Amazon to start labeling content created by artificial intelligence. “Any book written entirely by artificial intelligence should be labeled as such, and artificial intelligence garbage should be removed as a matter of urgency.”
Amazon said: “We have content rules that determine what books can be offered for sale, and we have proactive and reactive methods that help us detect content that violates our rules, whether it is generated by artificial intelligence or not. We invest significant time and resources to enforce our rules and remove books that do not comply with those rules.”
