Writer Gets Fired After AI-Generated Book Recommendation List Contains Fake Books

It's always sad when someone loses their job because of artificial intelligence.

It's always funny when someone loses their job because they were too lazy to do it without AI, and it backfired like an ACME-brand TNT plunger.

So, when you need a book to read, how do you find one? Well, most of us would just get a recommendation from a friend or hop on Amazon and type in an interest, then pick one. Others would just wait until Oprah tells them what to read. If you still have one around, you might wander into a Barnes & Noble, read all of their magazines for free, use the bathroom, then grab a World War II book and split.

But apparently there are those with no clue what to read until it plops into a newspaper, and that's what King Features, a content distributor, sent out to papers like the Chicago Sun-Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer with a feature called "Heat Index: Your Guide to the Best of Summer."

Here was the problem with it, though: according to the Associated Press, more than half of the titles on the list were completely fake.

A writer lost his job after his book recommendation list turned out to be AI-generated, as evidenced by the number of completely non-existent books on it. (Getty Images)

The writer behind the piece, Marco Buscaglia, admitted to generating it with AI and not double-checking it, something that was pretty evident when a bunch of fake books made the list.

"A really stupid error on my part," he reportedly wrote on his Facebook page (would be hilarious if that was generated by AI too).

Yeah, it's an error, but like I said, recommending books is easy. I have a bookshelf behind my desk, so I look smarter than I am when on camera. Let me turn around for a second and return with a book recommendation.

*Spins chair*

*Spins chair again because it was more fun than I thought it would be*

Alright, I'm back: Joyland by Stephen King. Yeah, he's insane, I know, but this book is great. I don't want to spoil it but it has a creepy carnival, a murderer, and what the kids call a "MILF."

See how easy that was? And I did it on my own! 

Here, I'll do another:

*Spins chair several times really fast, nearly vomits from motion sickness*

Okay — *dry heave* — this one is called Strange Angel by George Pendle and it's about the rocket scientist Jack Parsons. It's great. Check it out.

See! No AI necessary!