Author Jane Friedman vs. the AI scammers who stole her good name on Amazon GoodReads
There Are No Girls on the Internet
iHeartPodcasts
4.1 • 907 Ratings
🗓️ 16 August 2023
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Writer Jane Friedman has a stellar reputation in publishing. But a huckster, armed with AI impersonations of her writing, was trying to scam folks by using her name on Amazon GoodReads. She raised hell, and last week Amazon finally took them down. But what about new authors who don’t have her huge platform? Who is looking out for them?
Jane joins to talk about the threat AI presents to authors, publishing, and the rest of us.
I Would Rather See My Books Get Pirated Than This (Or: Why Goodreads and Amazon Are Becoming Dumpster Fires): https://janefriedman.com/i-would-rather-see-my-books-pirated/
Author discovers AI-generated counterfeit books written in her name on Amazon: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/08/author-discovers-ai-generated-counterfeit-books-written-in-her-name-on-amazon/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | They are not prepared for what's about to happen or what is already happening, which is this flood of AI generated material being uploaded. |
| 0:14.7 | There are No Girls on the Internet as a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. |
| 0:22.6 | I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. |
| 0:28.6 | Our names hold so much power. |
| 0:30.6 | When Anna Mae Bullock left her abusive husband, Ike, |
| 0:33.6 | she famously said that she didn't want any assets, |
| 0:36.6 | only the stage name that he had given her, Tina Turner. |
| 0:41.4 | So much of our reputation in who we are to the outside world is wrapped up in our names. |
| 0:46.7 | So what if someone was using AI to scam people using your name? |
| 0:51.6 | This is exactly what writer Jane Friedman woke up to find last week. |
| 0:55.6 | Someone was selling bad AI versions of books with her name listed as the author and selling |
| 1:00.9 | them on Amazon. When we sat down to talk about it, I quickly realized that I had Jane |
| 1:06.6 | mixed up with another woman who was also a big name in publishing, who is also named Jane Friedman. |
| 1:11.9 | Well, you may want to back up and reconsider that question because there's another Jane |
| 1:17.4 | Friedman in publishing who is the former CEO of Harper Collins and the founder of Open Road. |
| 1:24.0 | So you might want her instead for this podcast. |
| 1:29.7 | Ouch, embarrassing, right? |
| 1:32.1 | I know, not an ideal way to start an interview. |
| 1:35.9 | And I wouldn't ordinarily include my mistakes in the show. |
| 1:40.9 | But I felt like it highlighted the importance of and complexities around names, |
| 1:42.7 | especially in a field like publishing. |
| 1:45.0 | Jane says that she gets confused for the other Jane all the time. And I was struck by what a headspinner this all was. Jane having to differentiate |
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