Summary
- Originality.ai identified 1,272 out of 2,034 religious books on Amazon, or 63%, as likely generated by AI.
- The highest proportion was found in witchcraft books at 78%, followed by Hinduism at 76% and Taoism at 74%.
- In the witchcraft category, 53% of fact-checkable claims were flagged as potentially inaccurate.
A recent analysis indicates that a significant portion of religious titles on Amazon, specifically nearly 63%, are likely authored by artificial intelligence, based on a study of over 2,000 books.
In a report released on Wednesday, the AI detection company Originality.ai flagged 1,272 books as likely AI-generated across 14 different religious and belief categories, out of a total of 2,034 examined.
Myriad: How many days will Claude go down in August? Click to make your prediction.The category with the highest AI authorship was witchcraft, where 78% of books in the Wicca, Witchcraft & Paganism section were deemed likely AI-written. These titles often discuss topics such as healing crystals, herbal remedies, and the cleansing of "negative energies." Michael Fraiman, the report's author, noted that many witchcraft books center on these themes.
Fraiman explained, “One can picture the ideal customer as someone looking for solutions to heal themselves, improve their mental health, or ‘detox' from commonplace chemicals and drugs. These Wiccan books can address these concerns without being held to any scientific standard.”
Following witchcraft, Hinduism had a 76% likelihood, and Taoism was at 74%. Other religions such as Sikhism, Buddhism, Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Orthodox Christianity, and Judaism had varying percentages in between. Mormonism was at 42%, atheism at 40%, and Satanism at 22%. Researchers noted the differing sample sizes across categories made comparisons challenging.
The analysis included evaluations of book descriptions, author biographies, and text samples, categorizing those with scores of 50 or above as "Likely AI." However, Fraiman cautioned that these findings reflect likelihood rather than definitive proof.
“We don't make claims to certainty about whether books are definitively AI-written,” he stated. “Our model determines the likelihood that something was AI-written to a degree of certainty.”
Fraiman also mentioned that the research team conducted spot checks on books flagged as likely AI-generated.
Myriad: What will Elon Musk's net worth be by August 31? Click to make your prediction.“By now, our research team can distinguish between likely AI-generated content and that created by humans,” he added.
While Fraiman expressed confidence in the results, he acknowledged that AI detection tools can produce false positives and may yield inconsistent findings. For example, in October 2024, a test of four AI detectors analyzing the U.S. Declaration of Independence yielded conflicting assessments, with one detector indicating it was 97.93% AI-generated, while another claimed it was entirely human-written.
Additionally, in March, a legal filing was rejected by Colombia's Supreme Court after being flagged as AI-generated. However, when the court's ruling was submitted to the same detector, it was rated as 93% AI-generated.
As for Amazon, the company did not provide an immediate response to inquiries from Decrypt.
Fraiman noted, "Amazon is aware of how prevalent AI-generated content is on their platform and relies on an honor system for authors to self-identify their AI-written works," adding that they have not shared their findings with Amazon. "We lack data on how many authors actually disclose that."
The practice of using physical books to train AI has also faced scrutiny, as developers acquire millions of titles, dismantle them, scan pages into training datasets, and dispose of the originals.
In August, an investigation traced a shipment of rare books to an Amazon facility, where employees were found cutting off bindings to scan pages for AI training data. Amazon confirmed that it does obtain books through commercial channels for this purpose.