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Google Books, a vast digital library that indexes published material and serves as an essential resource for academics, has reportedly begun incorporating low-quality books, potentially compromising the integrity of its language tracking tool, Ngram.
AI-Generated Content Discovered in Google Books
According to a report by _404Media_, Google Books has included several books that appear to have been generated by artificial intelligence (AI) systems. The publication performed a search on Google Books using the phrase "as of my last knowledge update," a common phrase used by chatbots like ChatGPT, and discovered that among the search results were books that did not discuss AI but seemed to be written by a bot.
Potential Impact on Ngram Language Tracking Tool
The inclusion of AI-generated or low-quality content in Google Books raises concerns about its potential impact on Ngram, a research tool that tracks language usage over time by analyzing written works indexed by Google Books. Ngram takes information from these written works to show how language evolves, and it last updated its data in 2019.
Outdated or Inaccurate Information
_404Media_ found that some of the books it identified, such as Tristin McIver's _Bears, Bulls, and Wolves: Stock Trading for the Twenty-Year-Old_, appeared to have compiled information from Wikipedia about financial events. Additionally, books on topics like Twitter still contained information from 2021, which is when some AI models would have last received training data updates.
Google's Response and Potential Future Impact
While Google informed _404Media_ that recent works on Google Books do not currently show up in Ngram results, there is a possibility that these potentially AI-generated or low-quality books could be included in future data updates for the language tracking tool.
Implications for Research and Academic Integrity
The potential inclusion of AI-generated or low-quality content in Google Books and, consequently, Ngram, raises concerns about the integrity of the data used for research and academic purposes. Many linguists and other academics rely on Ngram as a valuable tool for gathering information about language evolution and usage, and the presence of inaccurate or artificially generated data could undermine the tool's reliability.
As the use of AI in content generation continues to grow, it is crucial for platforms like Google Books to implement robust measures to ensure the quality and accuracy of the material they index, particularly when such resources are used for academic and research purposes.
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| AI-generated or low-quality content in Google Books raises concerns about its potential impact on Ngram |