These AI-Generated Cookbooks Can Kill You

A number of books on foraging mushrooms and related cookbooks sold on Amazon are not authored by expert mycophagists or even by humans. They are generated by artificial intelligence and they are dangerous.

Mistakes are apparent even in the book titles. “Wild Mushroom Cookbook: form [sic] forest to gourmet plate, a complete guide to wild mushroom cookery” would never get past a human editor. “The Supreme Mushrooms Books Field Guide of the South-West” sounds like the AI author did not learn language from native English sources.

The Guardian examined four samples from foraging books sold on Amazon, running them past Originality.ai, a company that detects AI content. Every sample scored 100% on its AI-detection score, meaning the books were almost certainly written by a chatbot such as ChatGPT.

Foraging guide and field mycologist Leon Frey said the writing samples he had seen were rife with serious and dangerous flaws, such as referring to “smell and taste” as ways to identify shrooms. “This seems to encourage tasting as a method of identification. This should absolutely not be the case,” he said.

Besides the dodgy identification information, the guidebooks are  irresponsible in other ways. One of the bogus books points foragers to the edible lion’s mane fungus in the UK, but does not mention it is a protected species and should never be picked. “I would recommend choosing books from reputable sources,” Frey said.

An Amazon spokesperson said the online store was reviewing the books. “We take matters like this seriously and are committed to providing a safe shopping and reading experience. We’re looking into this.”

The New York Mycological Society warned its followers on X (nee Twitter): “Please only buy books of known authors and foragers, it can literally mean life or death.”

Photo credit: Andrew Janjigian / inaturalist