Description: Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited young adult romance bestseller list was flooded with allegedly AI-generated books that made little to no sense, disrupting the rankings. These books were reported to be "clearly there to click farm." Despite being removed from the bestseller list, many remained available for purchase. The incident raised concerns about the integrity of the platform, and the potential financial impact on legitimate authors.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: unknown developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Authors , Amazon Customers and Amazon.
Incident Stats
Risk Subdomain
A further 23 subdomains create an accessible and understandable classification of hazards and harms associated with AI
4.3. Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation
Risk Domain
The Domain Taxonomy of AI Risks classifies risks into seven AI risk domains: (1) Discrimination & toxicity, (2) Privacy & security, (3) Misinformation, (4) Malicious actors & misuse, (5) Human-computer interaction, (6) Socioeconomic & environmental harms, and (7) AI system safety, failures & limitations.
- Malicious Actors & Misuse
Entity
Which, if any, entity is presented as the main cause of the risk
Human
Timing
The stage in the AI lifecycle at which the risk is presented as occurring
Post-deployment
Intent
Whether the risk is presented as occurring as an expected or unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
Intentional
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline

Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited young adult romance bestseller list was filled with dozens of AI-generated books of nonsense on Monday and Tuesday. As of Wednesday morning, Amazon appeared to have taken action against the books, but the episode s…
Variants
A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.