Read it and weep — AI-generated fictional book list an uncomfortable reality

Opinion

Last weekend, the Chicago Sun-Times released a summer reading list that included hot new titles from Min Jin Lee, Andy Weir, Maggie O’Farrell and Percival Everett.

The only problem?

Ten of the 15 suggested books did not exist. The book titles and their capsule descriptions were generated by artificial intelligence.

These fake beach reads weren’t in the newspaper proper. They were part of a syndicated summertime-lifestyle insert filled with tips and advice on food, drink and things to do. Still, that an error this egregious would be published under the auspices of a venerable big-city newspaper is deeply discouraging. The list has since become an online joke, a scandalous news story and a blinking-red-light warning about the stresses facing legacy media.

There was no byline for this material, but the website 404 Media tracked it back to Marco Buscaglia, a real — and clearly fallible — person tasked with delivering almost all of the 64-page spread for King Features, which licensed the content to the Sun-Times and another major newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer. In a frank email to NPR, freelancer Buscaglia admitted to relying on generative AI. “Huge mistake on my part and has nothing to do with the Sun-Times,” he wrote. “They trust that the content they purchase is accurate and I betrayed that trust. It’s on me 100 per cent.”

But even if the initial mistake was Buscaglia’s, it was compounded by the Sun-Times’ reckless lack of institutional oversight. These non-existent books could have been caught with a quick once-over by any vaguely literary editor.

And while the Sun-Times is currently — and rightly — taking heat, this AI fiasco points to larger, industry-wide problems, as demographic shifts, technological changes, financial constraints and chronic understaffing lead to an increasing reliance on cheap listicles, generic “content creation” and ChatGPT slop.

Putting human culpability to one side, though, maybe the scariest takeaway here is that this AI-generated book list is actually kind of swell (I mean, apart from being totally made-up). The non-human prose is, for the most part, smoothly and weirdly plausible, with a queasy knack for sensing what readers want and then supplying it.

That’s what makes it so dangerous.

AI is clearly keyed into our collective reading habits. We love “sprawling multigenerational sagas” and “compelling character development” and things going wrong when guests with buried secrets are stranded on a remote vacation island. AI also knows what’s keeping us up at night — climate change, environmental devastation and things like drought, Category 5 hurricanes and endangered bird migrations.

Even knowing the list was phony, I have to admit the AI pandering got to me. Isabel Allende mixing up eco-anxiety and magic realism? Yes, please! Taylor Jenkins Reid writing about shenanigans in the art world? Sign me up! Jin Min Lee exploring class, gender and the underground economy at an illegal night market in Seoul? Sure! Percival Everett, who just snagged a Pulitzer for James, delivering a satirical take on a “near-future American West where artificially induced rain has become a luxury commodity?” I’d read that.

One of the listings really brought me up short, however. The faux book attributed to Andy Weir, who has written tech-heavy speculative novels like The Martian and Project Hail Mary, is titled The Last Algorithm. It’s about – get this! – a researcher who realizes an artificial intelligence model has gained consciousness and has been secretly influencing human affairs for years.

Is this an AI joke? A sinister confession? An out-and-out threat?

Whatever’s going on with our soon-to-be tech overlords, there has been some scrappy human resistance. Rebecca Makkai, the real-life author of The Great Believers and I Have Some Questions for You, is included on the AI-generated list as the author of the completely bogus Boiling Point. The reference to this imaginary novel has prompted Makkai to release her own list of 15 titles, which she guarantees are all “real books … written by humans.”

My own last word? This weekend, I’m even more thankful than usual for the Winnipeg Free Press’s standalone book section, where the titles are genuine, the authors are authentic, and the reviews are written by actual people connected to Manitoba.

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca