Mastodawn

David Scott Moyer

@susankayequinn I am all for the alternatives, but there are no ads imbedded in amazon ebooks.

@farbel first, you don't know that; second, they're *already* putting chatbots in the ebooks; third, Amazon has a long long LONG history of just rolling out stuff in small batch trials to see how it floats; fourth, I wouldn't be at all surprised if this was AI accidentally left in the ebook by a shitty AI enthusiast author; fifth, people have OPENLY talked about ads in ebooks FOREVER; sixth, if this is none of the above, wait a minute, that will change.

David Scott Moyer 1d ago

@susankayequinn First, I read a LOT of books on my aging kindle and have NEVER seen an ad. Second, nor have I ever seen a chatbot. Third, I don't know one single other person who has seen an ad or chatbot in an Amazon ebook. Your fourth point, I might believe, but that is not indicative of anything Amazon is doing other than allowing people to publish AI drek. Fifth, talk is talk. Sixth, everything changes, but that doesn't make your reposted meme true.

https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/e-readers/amazon-adds-ai-chatbot-to-the-kindle-app-which-offers-spoiler-free-answers-about-your-ebooks

@farbel it's in the kindle app now

Amazon adds AI chatbot to the Kindle app which offers "spoiler-free" answers about your ebooks

Only on iOS for now, Android owners have to wait until 2026

Tom's Guide

@farbel Amazon isn't just "allowing people to publish AI drek" it pushes me to use their AI translators and AI narrators every time I log into the author portal. It's been using AI to summarize and then bury reviews written by humans. It's PUSHING AI SLOP everywhere. It is literally shoving its chatbots into everything.

David Scott Moyer 1d ago

@susankayequinn Interesting. When I log in, it doesn't do that. I wonder why? My reviews appear to all be there in their original format. I wonder why? I see that chatbot is an option in the app, if, for some odd reason, a reader wants to ask questions about a book instead of just reading it. I have never come across it in my reading, because I don't do that.

It's above the reviews of every book I look at on Amazon, a "summary" of what people love about the book. It's not labeled as "AI", but that's clearly what it is.

Below that are the usual reviews, they are not changed. But how many people actually read on beyond that summary?

I know people no longer review much on Amazon, either, they just hit the stars at the end of an ebook, and that's it.

I will never review on Amazon again, I use Bookwyrm now.

@susankayequinn

Clare Hooley 1d ago

@farbel @susankayequinn the search has literally turned into a chat bot on iOS. It looks like classic search but it isn’t [edit: this is taking about search within the iOS kindle app, see linked article in thread above]. Doesn’t seem to be all books it’s doing to for me, but if it’s done that you can’t turn it off. You can give feedback on the answers.

@clare_hooley I strongly encourage you not to enage the chatbots at all, definitely not "feedback" you're just helping to train the bot

Clare Hooley 1d ago

@susankayequinn @farbel sadly impossible not to engage - it’s integrated into the search function [edit: this is taking about search within the iOS kindle app, see linked article in thread above]. But yeh my only feedback is ‘turn it off’.

@clare_hooley you can change your search engine? I use Firefox/DuckDuckGo and turn off all the AI features

Clare Hooley 1d ago

@susankayequinn @farbel this is about search within the iOS kindle app - if you are in the kindle app and use search in a book, this is now a chat bot. Yes, I do know about kobo, but kindle is one where I have legacy DRM’d books that I can only access that way so…

@susankayequinn

Yeah, that looks like an AI-slopped book that hasn't been edited properly. I just spied an m-dash in the next sentence. *snicker*

@Firlefanz @susankayequinn @farbel

Hiisikoloart 1d ago

I saw a video about amazon eBooks getting edited. As in old classics getting edited to have mentions of tiktok, instagram, facebook, twitter to make them more "current" but to me it smells like advertisement shit cakes to try to get people who read books to stop by their social medias instead.

Paperbacks they can't change at least...

@hiisikoloart

Yeah, it'll get to the point that anything printed after 2024 will not be allowed in libraries.

Such a dystopian thought.

@susankayequinn @farbel

Hiisikoloart 1d ago

@Firlefanz @susankayequinn @farbel
Hopefully it wont go to that and instead libraries demand that the books they choose are provenly human made with zero AI in them.

@hiisikoloart @Firlefanz @farbel

unfortunately, there's no way to prove there's zero AI (and the erasure of truth is part of AI's intent)
https://terribleminds.com/ramble/2026/03/20/shy-girl-ai-in-writing-and-a-new-perniciousness/

Shy Girl, AI In Writing, And A New Perniciousness

I wanna talk about Cameron’s The Terminator and Carpenter’s The Thing, but first, let’s get it out of the way — If you know anything at all about me in this Current Era, it …

Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds

@Firlefanz @farbel

I'm a big fan of em-dashes. They are not an AI thing — AI stole it from US. We are the source.

Chuck Wendig has it right: https://terribleminds.com/ramble/2026/03/20/shy-girl-ai-in-writing-and-a-new-perniciousness/

Shy Girl, AI In Writing, And A New Perniciousness

I wanna talk about Cameron’s The Terminator and Carpenter’s The Thing, but first, let’s get it out of the way — If you know anything at all about me in this Current Era, it …

Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds

@susankayequinn

No, m-dashes are not a sure-fire way of identifying an AI, of course not. And it's absolutely unfair to authors who like using them.

I was thinking that the combination of everything, i.e. the style, the insane plug and the m-dashes, does point to LLMs and AI.

Which, yes, are a pox on this world.

Shantell Powell 1d ago

@Firlefanz @susankayequinn @farbel I regularly use em-dashes. I do not use LLMs.

@Shanmonster

I don't use AI, either.

But I also do not like m-dashes, which might make me a stupid author?

@susankayequinn @farbel

Shantell Powell 17h ago

@Firlefanz @susankayequinn @farbel I don't like periods, so I went through menopause.