AI-generated ebooks appear in public library catalogs via aggregator platforms
Low-quality AI-generated ebooks are appearing in public library digital catalogs through platforms like Hoopla and OverDrive, forcing understaffed librarians to manually identify and filter AI-generated content or exposing patrons to AI-written books without their knowledge.
What happened
Low quality books appearing to be AI-generated are making their way into public libraries via their digital catalogs. Public libraries primarily use Hoopla and OverDrive to manage and lend ebooks, with these companies maintaining catalogs that libraries access through various payment models.
With Hoopla, librarians must opt into the platform's entire catalog and pay for whatever customers choose to borrow, with the only way to limit borrowing being to set a price cap per book. With OverDrive, librarians can pick and choose which books to offer to customers.
Reported impact
Librarians who are already understaffed face the choice of either manually sorting through a large number of books to identify AI-generated content or allowing patrons to borrow books without knowing they are AI-generated. Library customers may unknowingly borrow low-quality AI-written books while taxpayer dollars fund access to material of questionable quality.
Index analysis
Examples of AI-generated ebooks in library systems include titles like 'Fatty Liver Diet Cookbook' attributed to authors with no verifiable online presence and AI-generated profile pictures. The proliferation of such content appears enabled by the aggregator model where platforms like Hoopla automatically include large numbers of books in their catalogs.
Governance controls
Librarians lack effective tools to filter AI-generated content from patron-facing catalogs. The business model of Hoopla, which requires libraries to pay for customer borrowing of books from its entire catalog, creates a structural barrier to quality control.
Classification
Sources and evidence
Sources not yet published
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