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Comment by freefruit | Hacker News Reader

So is Amazon flooded with hyper niche e-books yet?

I went to buy an air fryer. There were several specific-air-fryer-model recipe books available. But they were all garbage auto-generated stuff.

I complained to amazon, and they said since I hadn't purchased the book they couldn't do anything. So I bought the book, complained, and returned it. The chapters devoted to the details of the specific air fryer model were either very general (almost quotes of product description on amazon), or just plain wrong.

What I thought I would get would be like the magic lantern books about specific camera models. Instead it was auto-generated pages of nonsense.

Your real-life example is a good case against using AI-generated legal or medical advice.

I’m working on a platform for reading hyper niche e-books: https://tryspellbound.com

I don’t think this form of generative AI needs to become a source of spam, carefully designed platforms can let people enjoy their niche content without making them feel isolated

Too late, it has become a source of spam.

Not really useful to give up the fight in the infancy of something with as much surface area as generative AI.

Is being used to create spam is not the same as needs to be spam, and we mostly just need platforms that leverage generative AI natively to bridge the gap.

There is literally zero need for tools to generate text. Humans generate tons of spam already.

My users don't find what these tools generate to be spam. They're enjoying a classic format with a novel level of flexibility and (understandably) find that very fun.

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