Agency stole bestselling author's book, used AI to relaunch as their own
6 hours ago
- #Copyright Infringement
- #AI Ethics
- #Digital Plagiarism
- An unauthorized website for 'The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows' surfaced, featuring the entire book text with AI-generated images and an AI word generator.
- The site was created by Qontour, a marketing agency, without permission from the author John Koenig, and it outranks the official site in search results.
- Qontour monetized the site with Amazon affiliate links and misrepresented copyright, while AI assistants like ChatGPT cite it as official, causing confusion.
- The incident reflects a broader trend of AI repurposing human creators' work without consent, highlighting issues of copyright and ethical concerns in generative AI.