It was, sadly, inevitable that some AI “hallucinated” prose was going to show up in a major nonfiction book from a Big 5 publisher, but the irony of that book being titled “The Future of Truth: How AI Reshapes Reality” is simply off the charts.

A week or so after publication, a New York Times investigation revealed that “The Future of Truth” contained “numerous made-up or misattributed quotes concocted by AI.” Steven Rosenbaum, the book’s author, acknowledged the errors, saying that he had previously disclosed his use of ChatGPT and Claude (leading generative AI models) during the “research, writing, and editing process,” and that for the errors he takes “full responsibility.”

One should hope so, though as I’ll get to in a bit, I think there may be some things we readers can do to arrest the potential for a slide down the slippery slope into a world of AI slop.

Published by the Matt Holt imprint under the Simon & Schuster banner, the book had garnered glowing pre-publication reviews and ecstatic blurbs from bestselling author Daniel Pink and The Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson, among equally august others.

Rosenbaum is the executive director of the nonprofit Sustainable Media Center and the author of a previous book, “Curation Nation: How to Win in a World Where Consumers Are Creators.” In addition to his acceptance of responsibility, Rosenbaum told the Times he’s starting his “own investigation,” which had me thinking of none other than O.J. Simpson.

Given that I’ve written my own book on writing and AI, and deliver talks and workshops in schools and universities on the subject, I could play armchair quarterback on how something like this could happen when interacting with the technology, but I’d rather get to the root of the problem.

And the root of the problem is a lack of respect.

It’s a lack of respect for the people that Rosenbaum misquoted or misattributed. It’s a lack of respect for readers who expect the nonfiction books they pick up to be as accurate as possible. For sure, humans are fallible, we make mistakes, but this is a case where Rosenbaum relied on a technology that invents wrong stuff as part of its inherent architecture and then published it without sufficient checking.

To me, this is ultimately also a lack of self-respect, of not having sufficient pride in your own work to do this very basic, very necessary thing.

So, what should be done about this? Maybe I’m a bit of a maximalist, but I believe the book should be recalled, pulped and not republished. The Times found a significant handful of botched quotes, but for me, this whole thing is tainted at this point. I’d also never trust a book by this author (or frankly, this imprint) again, unless and until I knew there were assurances that a human intelligence was responsible for every utterance in the book.

I know there’s a lot of enthusiasm for generative AI technology as a kind of co-intelligence that can make us smarter, but I can testify that this is simply not the case when it comes to writing, because this technology does not write.

It is an automated text generator.

Writing is about thinking, and feeling, and experiencing, and then filtering those things through a unique human intelligence for the benefit and enjoyment of other unique human intelligences. I can imagine many commercial uses for automated text generation, but using them to produce books purportedly written by humans isn’t one of them.

We don’t need to shrug and accept AI books as inevitable. Insist on being human.

Book recommendations from the Biblioracle

John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.

1. “Yesteryear” by Caro Claire Burke
2. “Reading Lolita in Tehran” by Azar Nafisi
3. “A World Appears” by Michael Pollan
4. “Still Life” by Sarah Winman
5. “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” by Milan Kundera

— Barbara D., Chicago

For Barbara, a book set in World War II that has a truly unique method for exploring the story: “Life After Life” by Kate Atkinson.

1. “Yesteryear” by Caro Claire Burke
2. “The Shadow of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
3. “Piranesi” by Susanna Clarke
4. “Project Hail Mary” by Andy Weir
5. “Vigil” by George Saunders

— Diana T., Deerfield

Here’s a book that’s been a reliable recommendation for like 20 years: “The Eyre Affair” by Jasper Fforde.

1. “The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt
2. “Matrix” by Lauren Groff
3. “Little Fires Everywhere” by Celeste Ng
4. “The Lincoln Highway” by Amor Towles
5. “My Friends” by Fredrik Backman

— Eden F., Chicago

Another reliable recommendation for most readers, particularly big stories with close character work: “Beautiful Ruins” by Jess Walter.

Get a reading from the Biblioracle

Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.

John Warner is the author of books including “More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI.” You can find him at biblioracle.com.