I Get Duped into Buying an AI Slop Book

And updates on cancel culture, counterclockwise dances, millionaires who pay to conduct orchestras, etc.

Back in 2024, I learned that somebody was trying to steal my readers with an AI book. Chatbots were still a a new thing, but I was already a victim. And it’s only gotten worse since then—AI slop is now flooding the market for books, music, images, podcasts, and every other creative field.

I thought I was smart enough to avoid it. But this week I got tricked into buying a slop book.

Here’s the back story: I’m excited about the World Cup, but want to improve my knowledge of the leading teams and players. So I ordered a book online that promised to be the “ultimate insider’s guide.”

When it arrived, I opened up the package to find a shoddy booklet that looked like it had been printed on a home computer. The illustrations were almost certainly AI generated. And the last eight pages were just blank lined paper—so the reader could take “notes” on the games.

But the text itself was the giveaway.

This book I purchased on the World Cup was listed as having 96 pages—but eight of them look like this.

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Here is opening of the Introduction:

The FIFA World Cup is not merely a sporting competition. It is the heartbeat of a planet that stops, holds it breath, and exhales in euphoric unison once every four years. From its humble beginnings in 1930 to the colossal globe-spanning spectacle it has become today, no event on earth gathers more eyeballs, more passion, or more raw human emotion than the World Cup. Entire economies pivot on its results. Lifelong friendships are forged in stadium queues. Children in São Paulo, Lagos, Tokyo, and Manchester fall asleep dreaming of the exact same trophy….

It goes on and on in that vein, page after page—filled with empty pretentious phrases and vague generalizations. In the entire book, there isn’t a single thing I found of value—none of the insights and analysis I’d sought.