Amazon pulls AI knockoff book impersonating ABC's Cam Wilson

The AI-generated book sold on Amazon was called "Conspiracy Nation Exercises: Redefine Living Through Cam Wilson Teachings," attributed to a non-existent "Leni McAllister." It was a knockoff of a book Cam Wilson, the ABC's national AI reporter, co-authored and published last year.

Wilson bought a copy. It arrived as 89 double-spaced pages in Comic Sans on A4 paper, "filled with things I didn't say, poorly written and bizarrely laid out," he wrote for the ABC. The giveaways were the ones Wilson flagged: em dashes, and the "it's not X, it's Y" construction.

The fraud is not aimed only at reporters. Author Natalie Kyriacou found her own fake, "Nature's Last Dance Exercises: Redefine Living through Natalie Kyriacou Teachings," built from the same template. "We have been trying to remove them but they pop up everywhere," she said. Lucy Hayward, chief executive of the Australian Society of Authors, told the ABC that "on the publication day for an author, you'll often see that there's already an AI-generated version of the book that's already been on sale."

Amazon pulled the Wilson listing and said: "We have proactive and reactive methods that help us detect content that violates our guidelines, whether AI generated or not." It did not say who created the book.

Underneath this sits a policy fight. The Australian government has been consulting on two proposed changes to copyright law that would let AI companies train on creators' work on an opt-out basis, and a leaked version of the proposal has already drawn political backlash across the spectrum. Hayward's camp wants opt-in instead, arguing that "AI companies need to do licensing deals with authors."