Understanding the Invasion of AI-Generated Products in E-Commerce

• Generative AI

Understanding the growing presence of AI-generated products in e-commerce is crucial for consumers, artists, authors, and the AI community.

Imagine flipping through a coloring book where the illustrations depict beautiful women with impressive bone structures, surrounded by or covered in flowers. However, upon closer inspection, you find that some of these women don't have the correct number of fingers, or the fingers are elongated, giving an eerie alien-like appearance. This is just one example of how AI-generated products are infiltrating online marketplaces.

The Emergence of AI-Generated Products in E-Commerce

Artificial intelligence is transforming how we communicate, work, and create. It is now making its way into e-commerce, with AI-generated self-help books, mugs, wall art, and coloring books proliferating in online marketplaces such as Amazon and Etsy. These products are often sold without disclosing their AI origins, making it nearly impossible for consumers to confirm if something is AI-generated based on appearance alone.

The implications of this trend are significant. It can lead to more scam products in the already confusing online shopping landscape. Consumers could buy something of low quality or even damage real artists' livelihoods.

The Implications of Buying AI-Generated Goods

AI-generated goods can be appealing due to their novelty and uncanny strangeness. However, when AI's involvement is not apparent or desired, a product can be a scam, outright fraud, and even dangerous. The sellers often use AI to reduce costs and time, capitalizing on popular categories of goods for easy revenue.

There are also ongoing debates on copyright and intellectual property rights surrounding AI. Many generative AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, image-generator Dall-E, Google’s Bard, and Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion were trained on content scraped from the internet, including copyrighted images and writing. Original creators argue they are not being paid or credited for their work.

The Call for AI Product Regulation

AI-generated content is not banned at any of the big e-commerce companies that use third-party sellers, including Amazon and Etsy. None require any label or disclosure on products made primarily using AI tools. However, organizations like the Authors Guild are calling for legislation, urging companies to disclose when AI writes a book.

Amazon has recently added a requirement for self-published books using Kindle Direct Publishing to disclose if they are AI-generated. However, this information must be shown to shoppers, which is a significant consumer risk.

Identifying AI-Generated Products

Until there are laws and labels, determining what's AI-generated falls to the buyer. AI-generated text and images have some common tells but could be more foolproof. Consumers must rely on some old-fashioned detective work, such as looking through all available product images, reading the small print, and researching the sellers.

Regardless of the challenges, it is essential to remember that AI-generated content will always be better than human-created stuff. Mary Rasenberger of the Authors Guild says, "AI is always based on prior stuff; there's no magic there. It's just a blender."