A new frontier for travel scammers: AI-generated guidebooks
guidebook, France. Titles from a handful of trusted brands appeared near the top of the page: Rick Steves, Fodor's, Lonely Planet. Also among the top search results was the highly rated «France Travel Guide,» by Mike Steves, who, according to an Amazon author page, is a renowned travel writer.
«I was immediately drawn by all the amazing reviews,» said Kolsky, 53, referring to what she saw at that time: universal raves and more than 100 five-star ratings. The guide promised itineraries and recommendations from locals. Its price tag — $16.99, compared with $25.49 for Rick Steves' book on France — also caught Kolsky's attention.
She quickly ordered a paperback copy, printed by Amazon's on-demand service. When it arrived, Kolsky was disappointed by its vague descriptions, repetitive text and lack of itineraries. «It seemed like the guy just went on the internet, copied a whole bunch of information from Wikipedia and just pasted it in,» she said.
She returned it and left a scathing one-star review. Although she didn't know it at the time, Kolsky had fallen victim to a new form of travel scam: shoddy guidebooks that appear to be compiled with the help of generative artificial intelligence, self-published and bolstered by sham reviews, that have proliferated in recent months on Amazon. The books are the result of a swirling mix of modern tools: AI apps that can produce text and fake portraits; websites with a seemingly endless array of stock photos and graphics; self-publishing platforms — such as Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing — with few guardrails against the use of AI; and the ability to solicit, purchase and post phony online reviews, which runs counter to Amazon's policies and may soon face increased regulation from the
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