AI election interference enters the Amazon era
Before Canadians cast their votes on April 28th, a different kind of campaign blitz has hit Amazon – and it’s powered by generative AI.
Image by Nurphoto via Getty Images
Before Canadians cast their votes on April 28th, a different kind of campaign blitz has hit Amazon – and it’s powered by generative AI.
Dozens of political books generated by AI have flooded the Canadian marketplace after being published on Amazon in the weeks leading up to the election.
Many readers may even be oblivious to the fact that they were written by AI, despite the books being riddled with errors. There are also random outbursts of surrealism that allegedly sound hallucinatory.
Current Prime Minister Mark Carney has been the subject of 30 books this year, 16 in March alone. Most of these books have since been removed by Amazon.
One of the main authors in this deluge is James A. Powell, whose imaginative titles include “The technocratic takeover of the global economy” and “Inside Mark Carney’s blueprint for the post-democratic world.”
Even more preposterous is “Mark Carney biography: the rise of the tin man who deserves respect for building a better world for all”.
Another book even showed the wrong person on the cover.
Amazon currently uses Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), which is conveniently easy to self-publish on and currently doesn’t require AI disclosure to readers, though they may well mandate this in the future.
This isn’t the first time Amazon’s AI systems or content moderation practices have come under fire. In March, Amazon’s AI summary tool labelled Adolf Hitler’s controversial 1925 book Mein Kampf a “true work of art.”
Also, when customers trustfully glance at user reviews, many are inauthentic. A 2023 study showed that 43% of the 33.5 million reviews examined were indeed fake.
Disinformation isn’t new to elections – In Romania, the Constitutional Court annulled the first round of the 2024 presidential election after declassified intelligence revealed a coordinated Russian campaign on TikTok promoting far-right candidate Călin Georgescu, who had unexpectedly led the vote.
Now, AI’s role in shaping voter perception has entered the literary canon, subtly and algorithmically.
