In a video published on YouTube Shorts today, Joanna Stern called out Apple over AI-generated knockoffs of her book that continue to appear on Apple Books. Here are the details.
Two years ago, shortly after publishing Burn Book: A Tech Love Story, Kara Swisher called attention to a wave of AI-generated knockoffs that had flooded Amazon, copying both the book’s cover and content.
As she brought attention to the issue, other authors said they were facing the same problem. At the time, Swisher said she raised it with Amazon’s leadership, which acted to curb the knockoffs of her book, though most authors did not have the same access.
Now Joanna Stern is raising a similar issue, this time involving Apple Books. In a YouTube Shorts video published earlier today, Stern said that shortly after her book, I Am Not a Robot: My Year Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything, was released, she found more than 10 AI-generated knockoffs on the platform. Many featured similar covers, while at least one was published under a slightly misspelled version of her name.
Stern says that she took the issue to Apple, which moved to remove the books from Apple Books. However, it wasn’t long before other versions returned.
In the video, Stern also says that while Amazon appears to have improved at handling AI-generated copycats of bestselling books, she still found (and bought) two workbooks based on her own book. Amazon has since removed both listings.
Back to Apple, the company told Stern that in addition to having transparency and disclosure rules around AI-generated content on Apple Books, its policies “strictly prohibit content that misleads customers or infringes on copyright.”
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Marcus Mendes is a Brazilian tech podcaster and journalist who has been closely following Apple since the mid-2000s.
He began covering Apple news in Brazilian media in 2012 and later broadened his focus to the wider tech industry, hosting a daily podcast for seven years.
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