I'm a trained botanist, amateur forager, but one thing most people don't understand about nature is how different plants and fungi can be in different places. Any foraging book that doesn't specify a geographic area is not to be trusted.
Not only that, but even some expert mushroom foregers with decades of experience got poisoned by failing to identify a poisonous mushroom that mimics an edible one, despite being able to pick the two apart easily for years, except suddenly the mushroom changed appearance enough to fool even someone who is a long term expert in the field.
@@blockoboi5941 I was going to transcribe the sound mr krabs makes when he walks but… how in the world do I do that? I’ve never thought about this before and I’m baffled.
As a librarian and a writer, this is terrifying. It’s already hard enough to keep shady self published nonfiction out of the collections, now we have to worry about this.
Absolutely. And it's going to get much harder to tell as AI becomes unchecked because places like Amazon don't care. If it makes them money they are lax about it.
I’m worried for the future when ai starts to get more accurate. Big companies see ai as our future and keep investing in it, ignoring the harm it’s causing and will continue to cause. All these ai sites should be shut down before it’s too late and it makes something 1000x worse than books poisoning people and CP.
I watched this video by a guy called Atomic Shrimp. His video compared the fake books to the books written by real people (ex. Pictures, descriptions, formatting, etc). The fake ones were pretty barren and didn’t give a lot of useful info.
AI results for edible plants are blending the descriptions for the edible plant and the poisonous lookalike. Example would be cow parsley (hemlock is the lookalike) and my Google results I used to use to show people what it looks like is corrupted now 😢
Amazon has a history of trying to weasel out of responsibility. I think with these dangerous products being promoted by the website puts the responsibility firmly on Amazon and I hope someone makes them stop this bs
Companies are generally not held responsible for selling a product unless it's illegal or they have been notified of a serious issue and still refuse to take it down. It's usually the creator, publisher, or manufacturer who is held responsible.
this reminds me of that one tumblr post about a mushroom picture someone showed to an AI and it said like "yum! that's totally edible" but it was something called an angel of death mushroom that apparently melts your stomach if you eat it and by the time you have symptoms its too late to seek help and you WILL die.
It doesn't "melt your stomach," it contains chemicals that destroy your liver. Once your liver dies, it starts releasing all the dangerous stuff it was trying to get rid of into your blood, causing extremely painful and body-wide organ failure. You'll get seizures, uncontrollable vomiting, and intense abdominal pain amongst other terrible symptoms. Actually more horrifying than a melted stomach if you ask me, haha.
I love the late stage reality we live in 🥰😍 getting poisoned by AI generated books was definitely what I was looking forward to the most as a kid, not a cure for cancer, not hoverboards or jet packs, oh no, it’s THIS!!! 🤪
Look, AI can be bad, but I hate it when people assume we’ve had no cool inventions in the past few years. We have flying trains (incredibly fast), cloned meat (don’t need to torture animals to get meat), personal water filters, vaccines, etc. We don’t need jet packs and AI can be used to help people. Just like with Ozempic, everyone always focuses on the negatives. Ozempic itself is lifesaving for people with diabetes and obesity, but everyone always focuses on celebrities using it for weight loss. The main problem is politicians not regulating them, not the invention itself
As someone literally going to school for mushrooms and plants, human experience is SO INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT when making handbooks like this. The fact that people can do this but there are still legal problems with highly experienced foragers selling completely safe mushrooms is crazy
All The Rain Promises And More is a great foraging and mushroom identifying guidebook that is NOT AI generated! You can tell because the author is on the cover holding a big mushroom AND a trumpet
That is a classic book. So whimsical and yet so informative. I talked to a mycologist who went to a dinner party at David Arora's house, and asked her if it was as strange as I would imagine. She said it was much stranger. Lol.
The caveat is if it's a fiction series with multiple books and the number is the amount of books in the series in 1 and the book is THICK. Like thicker than god. But yeah for informational, run.
As a person who loves mycology,(the study of fungi) this kind of ticks me off because it’s not only taking away from actual mycologist, but also putting the people who bought these books in danger
When I imagined what a future with AI would have been a few years ago I thought of it doing the tasks humans didn't want to do reducing the monotony in life. Nope it's just making books that make dangerous factual errors.
I suppose it's because right now there is literally no regulation regarding AI usage. I hope people in charge of big organisations and countries will notice the problem, because it's definetly growing
I never want to scare peeps from mushroom hunting, but my god these books terrify the fuck out of me. I have this 800 page book that details so much information to look out for when identifying. When it comes to mushrooms, you have cap shape (convex, bell, conical, knobbed, etc), you have the surface texture of the cap, gill spacing, gill to stalk, rings on the stalk, stalk texture, base/bulb shape, hollowness, smell, color, microscopic spore shape, spore color, my goodness and so much more, and even then it's STILL difficult to identify 100%. I hope more videos shine light onto this topic because people need to know about these god awful ai 'books'.
yeah with parsley family even if theyre not that difficult to ID everyone just says avoid like the plague cause the consequences for a bad ID are just: you die, fast
@@AfkAmbiance For sure. Yeah the only foraging groups I've heard of are usually official with actual experts on the field. I've never heard of those parties before though, man that's scary.. one wrong berry and poof
@@AfkAmbianceI mean they aren’t wrong that touching the mushrooms won’t harm you, but you are correct that it’s not safe to tell children this for the reasons you mentioned.
Just a note for anyone who’s interested in getting into mushroom foraging: a LOT if experts will tell you not to use these ai books, but they’ll also tell you not to JUST trust the real books either!!! If you wanna go into mushroom foraging, ALWAYS take it to an expert-in person-to help check before eating. You never know what you may have missed!
Been having PTSD flashbacks for the last half hour. This video comes at the right time. Thank you for the silly and goofy evil pinely distractions. Update: The flashbacks have been able to come down a few hours afterwards. Thank you for the words of encouragement. I'm doing a bit better today. Not much but no flashbacks at least.
At this point, the only way to reliably get good advice without having to do a bunch of research to determine the origin of the advice is to actively go to your library and search out books with dates published before AI was prevalent. Which works for now, but leaves us with the issue that eventually those books will be outdated.
Published books are rarely fact checked so even that isn't all that reliable. Also, it varies library to library but books that haven't been checked out for a set amount of time get removed to make room for books that more people want to read. Some of the libraries have a short enough limit that they may already have mostly books published after AI.
@ yeah, like I said you have a very limited time that older books and articles are useful especially in certain fields. We are probably reaching the point now as it’s 2025 that in fields like ecology articles from the pre AI era are too old.
If I had a dollar for every time a video about AI-generated foraging books in the last week, I'd have two dollars. Which isn't much but it's weird that it happened twice.
The channel Folding Ideas has a video about a “get rich quick” scheme some people were promoting that involved paying someone (not an expert, just a random ghostwriter) to write a nonfiction book on trending subjects. The ghostwriter would then write the book as quick as possible (because the goal is to pay as little money as possible, so you don’t want to pay for a quality product), often disregarding fact or regurgitating wikipedia for the length of a novel. The person would then post this book to Amazon or audible for money. I think it’s clear that using AI is the next logical step of this scheme.
Follow Alexis Nikole y'all!! She has a series that shows similar looking plants and how to tell which one is safe to eat, and recipes for local plants you can safely eat!
I would like to add that foraging for mushrooms, regardless if the book is ai generated or not can be dangerous for someone who isn't very knowledgeable about mushrooms. for every tasty mushroom theres one that looks exactly like it that will liquify your insides. obviously not trying to victim blame but its best to get store bought if you want to eat mushrooms.
@@AfkAmbianceThere are so many reasons why people forage for food, and most often it’s not because they are pretending to be survivalists. The reason I do it is because I love the connection to local nature and you can’t find most of these foods in stores. Many people forage because they live in food deserts, so foraging is their best option. It’s easy to forage safely, as long as you learn from experts (actual experts, not blogs or these ai books) and always have reasonable caution.
You know what solves this problem? Checking out books from your local library for free or going to your state’s nature and wildlife website for resources about foraging in the forests in your area
hell i've heard peeps about libraries stocking genAI books, so those might not even be completely safe in certain cases. take that with some salt though
When I was a kid, my parents took us into the woods for some mushroom picking. My mother and grandmother supposedly knew their mushrooms and identified the edible ones. Hover, they also had the good sense to ask someone who was an expert forager. She immediately had us throw out most of the mushrooms since they were actually poisonous . My parents threw out the rest just to be sure.
You bring up an interesting point by saying it would be an illegal offense to suggest that someone determine if something is water or bleach by tasting it. That's not illegal to simply suggest that someone do that. It could be bad advice, a joke, etc. But, publishing a book on mushroom foraging implies an expertise in the subject, that makes ppl more likely to follow that advice. Is it illegal to put out a book w bad advice, even life threatening advice, in it? I don't think it is. It's definitely messed up, tho.
I feel like it could get criminal negligence charges brought against someone, possibly Amazon for allowing the book to be published, or the software that created it, or whoever imputed the prompt, or any real human who may have had to go over the book for consistency/to make it passed AI sensors
Go back to the bleach scenario for a second. If I knew the other person genuinely was that suggestive (maybe from a mental condition, lack of maturity and life experience, maybe too young to know better, etc), I think that would be illegal, since it would be a case of clearly misleading someone I knew was reliant upon me for their safety. But either way, this makes the publishers even worse, because not only do they not care about the accuracy, but they're hoping from people to not know better. It's the Nigerian Prince Scam model; you don't want to scam everyone, just the people who'll never realise they've been scammed.
@@mackerel_10yep. two students have been expelled at my school just last year for it. my teachers bring it up every syllabus along with the old plagiarism model i heard in high school
"Is he a cartoon character, where his last name has to refer to his profession" I mean... that's literally how most western last names got their roots.
I recently watched Atomic Shrimp look at some of these AI foraging guides and comparing them to real ones and… at BEST they’re unhelpful… at worst, dangerous!
Yknow, you would THINK some mushroom pickers would avoid those books if they knew they were written by AI. But that's not quite the case. Unfortunately, a lot of people are very happy to go foraging plants and fungi with just AI books/apps and a dream. Some people will just blindly believe AI for some reason, and it will be my villain origin story.
I get using aliases. If I were to be an author or other public figure, I’d probably use one too. I want a recognizable name so people know all the books are written by one person, but I’d also want my work life to be separate from my private life. But like picking an alias is so fun, why have the ai do it? :[
Not the point but one of the screenshots showed one those AI books had 41 reviews and a high star rating…like, how?? Those aren’t crazy numbers but still way more than I’d expect. Is foraging a super-popular genre? Are the reviewers all bots? Some of both?
I once accidentally bought a AI generated coloring book from amazon. The pictures looked somewhat legit, so I decided to test my luck. When it arrived, the models had three legs, backwards arms et simila (not even the willpower to ask chatgpt to generate new ones?? Come on) I left them a ghastly review, and now I can’t find the “company” anymore 🥳
Atomic Shrimp (a UK RUclipsr and forager, among other varied interests) bought a few of them and did a really thorough examination and review of them, what's wrong and dangerous about them, and how they compare to real foraging books. It was really interesting (if a bit scary).
this is utterly dystopian. to get good information about what mushrooms will literally kill you and which ones taste good, you first have to sift through a bunch of books with blatantly incorrect information and try to find one that wasn't generated with a single prompt by people who don't care about the safety of others, only getting as much profit as possible
I wish Amazon and other websites would outright ban books like that because it’s going to kill someone someday if it hasn’t already and we don’t know about it yet.
I’ve always been into the idea of learning more skills and facts about the world, but ngl, I don’t wanna have to know about which plants will kill me BEFORE I buy a “Which Poisonius Plants will Kill You” Book
Completely off topic but my gargoyle gecko hunted and ate bugs for the first time in over a year. He’s been eating literal gecko slop for ages and not even liking bugs if I wave them in front of him (no braincells). HE POUNCED AGAIN WHILE I’M WRITING THIS LET’S GOO- Thank you Evil Pinely for giving my gecko the Evil Braincell through your videos and gifting him with insatiable cricket bloodlust 🦗 💕
Actually saw a video of this the other day dude was into the hobby itself and it was more from that perspective but you are both right this needs to stop
Robert J Frost looks AI generated cuz he resembles a celeb (Oscar Issac?). All the others looks like real photos of boring ppl aka the exact type of person who'd make an AI book
I once bought a book that was about a country and it had the history, culture and tourist destination. The historical part was agony because sentences were repeated over and over. Statements written in different ways but make the same point. The rest was very dry and very generalized. The way you can tell is how glossed over the information is. I told Amazon I wanted to return it because it was written by ai. They gave me a refund without me having to return it. I wish they had a rule where it must be obligated to put that the book was written by ai. I had picked that one for the lower price but I won't make that mistake again.
Friendly reminder its probably safer to buy foraging books in person at a bookstore are outdoor camping type stores not online where its hard to tell what's real and whats fake
The fact that AI writes books is bad enough but to also have a whole Instagram or FB of an author who doesn't exist is terrifying. This is dystopian and beyond unethical.
The genral public seems unable to identify self-published non-fiction crap sold on major internet retailer... a lot of people fall for seo-maxing titled junk and don't do any research on the author's credentials or if it's even published with a real publisher. This was true even before AI generated books.
It's just all these online market places monopolizing the market, then letting anyone sell from without checks. When you go to the super market, you don't have to check your cereal before buying it to make sure someone didn't fill it with nails, whilst the general public can be gullible rubes, businesses should be enforcing rules to make sure the people selling under their banner are providing products that actually work.
It's even worse for ebooks/books that have a digital version, because it's incredibly easy for an author (or company) to make fake accounts to write reviews on 'verified purchases'. Happens plenty enough at "large online retailer" for other goods to, but on digital content reviews are entirely not trustworthy. Unfortunately the only solution I see is to always verify the author exists, did publish the book, and has expertise in the field backed up by independent media. A reputable publisher can also help. This hurts some authors, but it's the only way to stay safe.
It's amazing to me that this is what it takes for people to learn that you should buy a _scientific resource_ about a certain subject from a _trusted publisher or expert_ in that subject. As if that wasn't a problem before or anything. Buy hey, blame the current trend instead of ourselves, that's what we're good at. Saves us the effort of learning.
Look for any book printed before AI came along. Check out used bookstores if you have to. There are plenty of useful books out there, ignore the AI compiled.
Tasting is often an encouraged method of determining ID of some mushrooms, you can chew up a small piece and spit it out, of any mushrooms, without worry, of being poisoned.
Unfortunately, the major examples of dangerous AI books don't at all put that last (EXTREMELY IMPORTANT) bit of information out there. It just says "give it a taste :)" and people get really hurt.
I'm a trained botanist, amateur forager, but one thing most people don't understand about nature is how different plants and fungi can be in different places. Any foraging book that doesn't specify a geographic area is not to be trusted.
This doesn't just apply to plants, but also animals.
@@glenmorrison8080 I also really like the field guides that are written by, Stan Tekiela.
@@jennyknopps1291 100% agree
There's tons of fungi resources people reference in North America that are written specifically for Europe. It's a bit worrying.
Not only that, but even some expert mushroom foregers with decades of experience got poisoned by failing to identify a poisonous mushroom that mimics an edible one, despite being able to pick the two apart easily for years, except suddenly the mushroom changed appearance enough to fool even someone who is a long term expert in the field.
It is already morally unethical to use AI to write books, but to do one to identify posion! What goes through their heads it should be criminal.
What goes through their head?
MONEY!
MONEY!
MONEY!
MONEY!
MONEY!
@@jampine8268 🦀
@@blockoboi5941 I was going to transcribe the sound mr krabs makes when he walks but… how in the world do I do that? I’ve never thought about this before and I’m baffled.
BLABCLABCLLABLLCALB
or something idfk
@@devtimer9731 it is not fine, it takes from other people's works and takes no effort.
As a librarian and a writer, this is terrifying. It’s already hard enough to keep shady self published nonfiction out of the collections, now we have to worry about this.
Absolutely. And it's going to get much harder to tell as AI becomes unchecked because places like Amazon don't care. If it makes them money they are lax about it.
I’m worried for the future when ai starts to get more accurate. Big companies see ai as our future and keep investing in it, ignoring the harm it’s causing and will continue to cause. All these ai sites should be shut down before it’s too late and it makes something 1000x worse than books poisoning people and CP.
I watched this video by a guy called Atomic Shrimp. His video compared the fake books to the books written by real people (ex. Pictures, descriptions, formatting, etc). The fake ones were pretty barren and didn’t give a lot of useful info.
i literally watched that vid of him likesome hours ago and evil pinely (obviously checking my history) just went to drop this one
That video is so good - especially when he went into what actually good books look like
atomic shrimp mention ‼️‼️
I love Mike, his voice is so soothing
wild seeing shrimp mentioned here
AI results for edible plants are blending the descriptions for the edible plant and the poisonous lookalike. Example would be cow parsley (hemlock is the lookalike) and my Google results I used to use to show people what it looks like is corrupted now 😢
just add something like before:2023-01-01 to your query so it won't show anyting later than that
Having proper physical reference books (especially with pictures) is more important now than ever
I’m remember going on Pinterest to look at flowers, and I saw one pretty flowers and turn out it was ai
frr, i stick with websites and books from before ai
It doesn't even need to be for identify. Just search a popular fictional character and there's too many ai results
I hope these people get sued but mostly i hope that amazon gets sued so they finally do something about this
Amazon has a history of trying to weasel out of responsibility. I think with these dangerous products being promoted by the website puts the responsibility firmly on Amazon and I hope someone makes them stop this bs
Companies are generally not held responsible for selling a product unless it's illegal or they have been notified of a serious issue and still refuse to take it down. It's usually the creator, publisher, or manufacturer who is held responsible.
this reminds me of that one tumblr post about a mushroom picture someone showed to an AI and it said like "yum! that's totally edible" but it was something called an angel of death mushroom that apparently melts your stomach if you eat it and by the time you have symptoms its too late to seek help and you WILL die.
Ai is trying to kill us, just not in the way the movies predicted
Did you mean Destroying Angel or Death Cap?
@@darksidegryphon5393 yeah destroying angel. its also known as angel of death.
Whomever named that mushroom was definitely a metalhead.
It doesn't "melt your stomach," it contains chemicals that destroy your liver. Once your liver dies, it starts releasing all the dangerous stuff it was trying to get rid of into your blood, causing extremely painful and body-wide organ failure. You'll get seizures, uncontrollable vomiting, and intense abdominal pain amongst other terrible symptoms. Actually more horrifying than a melted stomach if you ask me, haha.
I love the late stage reality we live in 🥰😍 getting poisoned by AI generated books was definitely what I was looking forward to the most as a kid, not a cure for cancer, not hoverboards or jet packs, oh no, it’s THIS!!! 🤪
yay capitalism!!
Nineteen-eighty-four literally has a machine that mass produces stories.
we live in thr future 🤩🤩
It's downfall when Elon Musk invented ChatGPT🙄😔
Look, AI can be bad, but I hate it when people assume we’ve had no cool inventions in the past few years. We have flying trains (incredibly fast), cloned meat (don’t need to torture animals to get meat), personal water filters, vaccines, etc. We don’t need jet packs and AI can be used to help people. Just like with Ozempic, everyone always focuses on the negatives. Ozempic itself is lifesaving for people with diabetes and obesity, but everyone always focuses on celebrities using it for weight loss. The main problem is politicians not regulating them, not the invention itself
As someone literally going to school for mushrooms and plants, human experience is SO INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT when making handbooks like this. The fact that people can do this but there are still legal problems with highly experienced foragers selling completely safe mushrooms is crazy
Going to school for mushrooms and plants in this economy?
Cardboard set is slowly becoming my favorite little charm of this channel
All The Rain Promises And More is a great foraging and mushroom identifying guidebook that is NOT AI generated! You can tell because the author is on the cover holding a big mushroom AND a trumpet
That is a classic book. So whimsical and yet so informative. I talked to a mycologist who went to a dinner party at David Arora's house, and asked her if it was as strange as I would imagine. She said it was much stranger. Lol.
Oh my god I adore the cover. That is brilliant.
Evil Pinely stabbed me in a alleyway and forced me to watch this video
i bet it was worth it tho. 🔥🔥🔥 video
that's not very evil
He's not called evil for no reason
@@disrupteddesign it was a good video at least
@@doktorhabilitowanystanczyk I’m still bleeding I don’t know the number for 911 help
Note to self: Avoid any book saying: "# books in 1"
The caveat is if it's a fiction series with multiple books and the number is the amount of books in the series in 1 and the book is THICK. Like thicker than god. But yeah for informational, run.
That mixed with the fact they’re only like 100 pages long. There’s no way a whole 7 books is only 105 pages long
The only valid "# books in 1" books are the ones advertising themseves as anthologies of a series-- and the books can be found separately too.
As a person who loves mycology,(the study of fungi) this kind of ticks me off because it’s not only taking away from actual mycologist, but also putting the people who bought these books in danger
Kind of the premise of the video but sure!
coming from a history geek, it’s like if someone were to use AI and publish a book about WW2. it’d be completely wrong.
@@Scarecrowm3 lol, the identity politics people aren't very smart, your post made me laugh really hard
When I imagined what a future with AI would have been a few years ago I thought of it doing the tasks humans didn't want to do reducing the monotony in life. Nope it's just making books that make dangerous factual errors.
I always thought it would be a quality of life type thing but now life is actually more difficult thanks to it
exactly. i thought ai was supposed to replace factory and cubical jobs not take over the human experience
I suppose it's because right now there is literally no regulation regarding AI usage. I hope people in charge of big organisations and countries will notice the problem, because it's definetly growing
instead of taking over factories and boring office jobs it took over every form of art instead. yipee!
I never want to scare peeps from mushroom hunting, but my god these books terrify the fuck out of me. I have this 800 page book that details so much information to look out for when identifying. When it comes to mushrooms, you have cap shape (convex, bell, conical, knobbed, etc), you have the surface texture of the cap, gill spacing, gill to stalk, rings on the stalk, stalk texture, base/bulb shape, hollowness, smell, color, microscopic spore shape, spore color, my goodness and so much more, and even then it's STILL difficult to identify 100%. I hope more videos shine light onto this topic because people need to know about these god awful ai 'books'.
yeah with parsley family even if theyre not that difficult to ID everyone just says avoid like the plague cause the consequences for a bad ID are just: you die, fast
@@AfkAmbiance yes especially with awful misinformation around
@@AfkAmbiance Oh wow, that is very unsettling.
@@AfkAmbiance For sure. Yeah the only foraging groups I've heard of are usually official with actual experts on the field. I've never heard of those parties before though, man that's scary.. one wrong berry and poof
@@AfkAmbianceI mean they aren’t wrong that touching the mushrooms won’t harm you, but you are correct that it’s not safe to tell children this for the reasons you mentioned.
Just a note for anyone who’s interested in getting into mushroom foraging: a LOT if experts will tell you not to use these ai books, but they’ll also tell you not to JUST trust the real books either!!! If you wanna go into mushroom foraging, ALWAYS take it to an expert-in person-to help check before eating. You never know what you may have missed!
Been having PTSD flashbacks for the last half hour. This video comes at the right time. Thank you for the silly and goofy evil pinely distractions.
Update: The flashbacks have been able to come down a few hours afterwards. Thank you for the words of encouragement. I'm doing a bit better today. Not much but no flashbacks at least.
Hope you feel better!
Hope you’re doing better ♡ I know the struggle; it’s certainly hell on earth imo.
Hope you're feeling better 💜
Literally same lol. Hope your day gets easier, friend!
Oh my god, I really hope you're all right
Next we're just gonna have one written by "Brian Bookauthor"
William Writersman.
Walter Wordster.
Penny Penname.
Iris Inksdaughter.
Sally Scribbleson.
Donald Doodlesen.
Patrick Papercrafton.
@@Dhdjksjsnsnsnnsnsnaperfect.
@@Dhdjksjsnsnsnnsnsnalmfaoo these are fire 😂😂
@@DhdjksjsnsnsnnsnsnaQuigley Quillsworth
Gertrude Gutenberg
Lawrence Leatherbound
Paige Pageman
Anna Tae Shawne
John writer
Opening this video and immediately hearing persona 4 music was a crazy jumpscare
I started dancing 🕺
Omg ikr I'm currently playing p4g and I thought I was hearing things lmao
SAME! ...Is Pinely a Persona fan?? 🤔
As an Isaac player same, thought I was gonna get sacred heart 😭
you can say that it's disturbing your peace
Fun fact- all mushrooms are edible, however some only once 🙃
Love the feeling of my stomach melting while I eat risotto
@@kingnightmarevin ACK
At this point, the only way to reliably get good advice without having to do a bunch of research to determine the origin of the advice is to actively go to your library and search out books with dates published before AI was prevalent. Which works for now, but leaves us with the issue that eventually those books will be outdated.
Published books are rarely fact checked so even that isn't all that reliable. Also, it varies library to library but books that haven't been checked out for a set amount of time get removed to make room for books that more people want to read. Some of the libraries have a short enough limit that they may already have mostly books published after AI.
Unfortunately with things like ecology that are changing frequently, books that are older may no longer be accurate. 😕
@ yeah, like I said you have a very limited time that older books and articles are useful especially in certain fields. We are probably reaching the point now as it’s 2025 that in fields like ecology articles from the pre AI era are too old.
This is the type of stuff that's making life more exhausting and we wonder why we feel tired and burnt out everyday.
If I had a dollar for every time a video about AI-generated foraging books in the last week, I'd have two dollars. Which isn't much but it's weird that it happened twice.
Atomic Shrimp?
Atomic shrimp?
Atomic Shrimp?
Atomic Shrimp.
Atomic Shrimp
Another reason why we need laws actually regulating AI starting with mandatory AI watermark
The channel Folding Ideas has a video about a “get rich quick” scheme some people were promoting that involved paying someone (not an expert, just a random ghostwriter) to write a nonfiction book on trending subjects. The ghostwriter would then write the book as quick as possible (because the goal is to pay as little money as possible, so you don’t want to pay for a quality product), often disregarding fact or regurgitating wikipedia for the length of a novel. The person would then post this book to Amazon or audible for money.
I think it’s clear that using AI is the next logical step of this scheme.
I can just imagine the ghostwriters being up in arms.
Follow Alexis Nikole y'all!! She has a series that shows similar looking plants and how to tell which one is safe to eat, and recipes for local plants you can safely eat!
She’s how I learned about forging too, I love her content!
seconding this! she’s so awesome
the biggest sweetie and smartie ever imo
@@AfkAmbiance foraging is fun
@@AfkAmbiance no way?! tell me more about these mysterious grocery stores??🙄
I would like to add that foraging for mushrooms, regardless if the book is ai generated or not can be dangerous for someone who isn't very knowledgeable about mushrooms. for every tasty mushroom theres one that looks exactly like it that will liquify your insides. obviously not trying to victim blame but its best to get store bought if you want to eat mushrooms.
@@AfkAmbianceThere are so many reasons why people forage for food, and most often it’s not because they are pretending to be survivalists. The reason I do it is because I love the connection to local nature and you can’t find most of these foods in stores. Many people forage because they live in food deserts, so foraging is their best option. It’s easy to forage safely, as long as you learn from experts (actual experts, not blogs or these ai books) and always have reasonable caution.
@@AfkAmbiance 💖eat a super poisonous mushroom pls 💖
Only buying books written pre 2022 from now on 😭
First big red flag: morels grow for about two weeks in the Spring, not summer.
in northeastern US, morels are around from april-june, give or take a month depending on weather.
You know what solves this problem? Checking out books from your local library for free or going to your state’s nature and wildlife website for resources about foraging in the forests in your area
hell i've heard peeps about libraries stocking genAI books, so those might not even be completely safe in certain cases. take that with some salt though
@@LavenderTea-lr3hconly way to guard against that would be don’t get out any books published after 2023 or something.
Nope. I work in a library, libraries aren't even safe anymore. We're fucking cooked as a society.
Librarians are clueless about mushrooms. Much better to read reviews by mushroom fans online.
@@MrCmon113 you do know librarians don’t write all the books?
AI is like ghost writing, but is actually a spirit stealing souls through misonformation
AI shrooms? What's next, AI meth?
If it's a rock it's meth, you can trust me I definitely did not just make that up like ai. (Huge sarcasm)
I put shrooms in my spaghetti sauce.
@@mumenRhyderlook a chunk of quartz and meth are basically the same thing. Like what’s the difference between C10H15N and SiO2 amirite?
When I was a kid, my parents took us into the woods for some mushroom picking. My mother and grandmother supposedly knew their mushrooms and identified the edible ones. Hover, they also had the good sense to ask someone who was an expert forager. She immediately had us throw out most of the mushrooms since they were actually poisonous . My parents threw out the rest just to be sure.
You bring up an interesting point by saying it would be an illegal offense to suggest that someone determine if something is water or bleach by tasting it. That's not illegal to simply suggest that someone do that. It could be bad advice, a joke, etc. But, publishing a book on mushroom foraging implies an expertise in the subject, that makes ppl more likely to follow that advice. Is it illegal to put out a book w bad advice, even life threatening advice, in it? I don't think it is. It's definitely messed up, tho.
I feel like it could get criminal negligence charges brought against someone, possibly Amazon for allowing the book to be published, or the software that created it, or whoever imputed the prompt, or any real human who may have had to go over the book for consistency/to make it passed AI sensors
@@datboilou That makes sense!
Go back to the bleach scenario for a second. If I knew the other person genuinely was that suggestive (maybe from a mental condition, lack of maturity and life experience, maybe too young to know better, etc), I think that would be illegal, since it would be a case of clearly misleading someone I knew was reliant upon me for their safety. But either way, this makes the publishers even worse, because not only do they not care about the accuracy, but they're hoping from people to not know better. It's the Nigerian Prince Scam model; you don't want to scam everyone, just the people who'll never realise they've been scammed.
I'm pretty sure anything put out by ChatGPT counts as plagiarism, but I'm not sure.
@@mackerel_10yep. two students have been expelled at my school just last year for it. my teachers bring it up every syllabus along with the old plagiarism model i heard in high school
i miss blonde bombshell evil pinely
Alexis Nikole is amazing btw! Recommend her for any foraging info and other plant knowledge
Atomic Shrimp also did a good video on this.
"Every mushroom is edible once"
Atomic Shrimp covered this topic well!
"Is he a cartoon character, where his last name has to refer to his profession"
I mean... that's literally how most western last names got their roots.
Specialist playing at the beginning made me do a double take but aslo was a pleasant surprise
Hopefully this will speed the process of getting legislation passed against the usage of A.I. for these kinds of endeavors
I recently watched Atomic Shrimp look at some of these AI foraging guides and comparing them to real ones and… at BEST they’re unhelpful… at worst, dangerous!
"authors" lmao can't stop laughing
Yknow, you would THINK some mushroom pickers would avoid those books if they knew they were written by AI. But that's not quite the case. Unfortunately, a lot of people are very happy to go foraging plants and fungi with just AI books/apps and a dream.
Some people will just blindly believe AI for some reason, and it will be my villain origin story.
I get using aliases. If I were to be an author or other public figure, I’d probably use one too. I want a recognizable name so people know all the books are written by one person, but I’d also want my work life to be separate from my private life.
But like picking an alias is so fun, why have the ai do it? :[
never expected evil pinely to be this evil, it’s literaly 1:00am in my country lmfao
So this is how classic bookshops and libraries return to prominence.
literally how is this legal
Evil Pinely extorted my family 💜
And if you look up something on the googs, you get an AI generated answer first, which you cannot trust.
5:34 isn't that how when second names were introduced how it worked?
Yes. Rick *shoesmith for example.
Also, I nearly had a stroke reading your comment
Not the point but one of the screenshots showed one those AI books had 41 reviews and a high star rating…like, how?? Those aren’t crazy numbers but still way more than I’d expect. Is foraging a super-popular genre? Are the reviewers all bots? Some of both?
Bots and real reviewers who get stuff for free as part of an amazon program
Hi Orr, it’s me, Bob.
Hi Bob, it's me, Val
@@BobLoblongEsq Hi Bob, it’s me, Pie
Hi Bob, Val, and Pie, it’s me, Kat.
Hi Bob, Val, Pie and Kat. It's me, Rai.
Hi bob, Val, pie, and kat, it’s me, dog
I once accidentally bought a AI generated coloring book from amazon. The pictures looked somewhat legit, so I decided to test my luck.
When it arrived, the models had three legs, backwards arms et simila (not even the willpower to ask chatgpt to generate new ones?? Come on)
I left them a ghastly review, and now I can’t find the “company” anymore 🥳
beautiful cabin crew ❤ scarlet johansson 💋
Atomic Shrimp did a good video recently on this
Atomic Shrimp (a UK RUclipsr and forager, among other varied interests) bought a few of them and did a really thorough examination and review of them, what's wrong and dangerous about them, and how they compare to real foraging books. It was really interesting (if a bit scary).
Yeah so we all going back to our local libraries for real books again, right?
8:17 good to know that as a start I should control find “how can I help you” when I buy an ebooks…
6:08 if i could replace every jameson charlie voice with this person's i would instantly
this is utterly dystopian. to get good information about what mushrooms will literally kill you and which ones taste good, you first have to sift through a bunch of books with blatantly incorrect information and try to find one that wasn't generated with a single prompt by people who don't care about the safety of others, only getting as much profit as possible
I wish Amazon and other websites would outright ban books like that because it’s going to kill someone someday if it hasn’t already and we don’t know about it yet.
In a different world Amazon would have some responsibility of what they publish and sell.
I got whiplash when that music started playing not cause I’ve played persona 4 but cause I’ve played too much of the binding of Isaac
Evil pinelys heart is sacred confirmed?
I’ve always been into the idea of learning more skills and facts about the world, but ngl, I don’t wanna have to know about which plants will kill me BEFORE I buy a “Which Poisonius Plants will Kill You” Book
Thanks for the anecdote at the end I needed a really good laugh today
Evil Pinely is my favourite pinely
The creators are fully liable for the damages I’m certain
Wow, what a surprise! I most definitely could not have seen this coming from a mile away.
I just spent the whole summer learning about mushroom foraging. This is wild 😅
I'm the 5 in 1 The Forager's Bible because 7 in 1 is just a tad too much for me. 😂
Thanks for another interesting video. 😊
Evil Pinely has beef with Atomic Shrimp now!
Did not expect that ending from your story 😂
I’m so glad I’m not a ghostwriter anymore. I’d be struggling for work.
Definitely no one saw that people would use AI to make money in nefarious ways a few years ago, shocking
Atomic Shrimp also made a video on these! It's a crazy topic 😬
Completely off topic but my gargoyle gecko hunted and ate bugs for the first time in over a year. He’s been eating literal gecko slop for ages and not even liking bugs if I wave them in front of him (no braincells). HE POUNCED AGAIN WHILE I’M WRITING THIS LET’S GOO-
Thank you Evil Pinely for giving my gecko the Evil Braincell through your videos and gifting him with insatiable cricket bloodlust 🦗 💕
Actually saw a video of this the other day dude was into the hobby itself and it was more from that perspective but you are both right this needs to stop
atomic shrimp has a really great vid abt ai foraging books & their harm :D
The video soundtrack has me waiting patiently to see Evil Pinely's persona.
Robert J Frost looks AI generated cuz he resembles a celeb (Oscar Issac?). All the others looks like real photos of boring ppl aka the exact type of person who'd make an AI book
got so hyped when alexis nicole popped up!! awesome creator if ur looking for some real knowledge
I once bought a book that was about a country and it had the history, culture and tourist destination. The historical part was agony because sentences were repeated over and over. Statements written in different ways but make the same point. The rest was very dry and very generalized. The way you can tell is how glossed over the information is.
I told Amazon I wanted to return it because it was written by ai. They gave me a refund without me having to return it. I wish they had a rule where it must be obligated to put that the book was written by ai. I had picked that one for the lower price but I won't make that mistake again.
Friendly reminder its probably safer to buy foraging books in person at a bookstore are outdoor camping type stores not online where its hard to tell what's real and whats fake
Wow, I couldn't possibly imagine any reasons as to why this would be extremely dangerous!
The fact that AI writes books is bad enough but to also have a whole Instagram or FB of an author who doesn't exist is terrifying. This is dystopian and beyond unethical.
I looked away for a minute and I thought it was James Charles talking in that tik tok
Hmm i think I'm the 7in1 forgers harvest bible
this is why you should support your local booksellers :) no AI slop there
The genral public seems unable to identify self-published non-fiction crap sold on major internet retailer... a lot of people fall for seo-maxing titled junk and don't do any research on the author's credentials or if it's even published with a real publisher. This was true even before AI generated books.
It's just all these online market places monopolizing the market, then letting anyone sell from without checks.
When you go to the super market, you don't have to check your cereal before buying it to make sure someone didn't fill it with nails, whilst the general public can be gullible rubes, businesses should be enforcing rules to make sure the people selling under their banner are providing products that actually work.
Funny seeing this after the recent video by Atomic Shrimp! Minds thinking alike
It's even worse for ebooks/books that have a digital version, because it's incredibly easy for an author (or company) to make fake accounts to write reviews on 'verified purchases'. Happens plenty enough at "large online retailer" for other goods to, but on digital content reviews are entirely not trustworthy.
Unfortunately the only solution I see is to always verify the author exists, did publish the book, and has expertise in the field backed up by independent media. A reputable publisher can also help. This hurts some authors, but it's the only way to stay safe.
We are foragers. This is definitely scary, and directly affects us.
Evil Pinely cooked me up some mushrooms and promised me nothing bad would happen if I ate th...
It's amazing to me that this is what it takes for people to learn that you should buy a _scientific resource_ about a certain subject from a _trusted publisher or expert_ in that subject. As if that wasn't a problem before or anything. Buy hey, blame the current trend instead of ourselves, that's what we're good at. Saves us the effort of learning.
“Ethan Wildwood” sounds like a name I’d give one of my ocs ngl 💀
Look for any book printed before AI came along. Check out used bookstores if you have to. There are plenty of useful books out there, ignore the AI compiled.
Tasting is often an encouraged method of determining ID of some mushrooms, you can chew up a small piece and spit it out, of any mushrooms, without worry, of being poisoned.
Probably by someone who has done this for a while, no? I feel like suggesting that to entire noobs is dangerous.
Unfortunately, the major examples of dangerous AI books don't at all put that last (EXTREMELY IMPORTANT) bit of information out there. It just says "give it a taste :)" and people get really hurt.
Evil Pinely's mic skills are slightly more evil than his non-evil twin.
Evil pinely looking absolutely stunning