Manitoba mushroom book prompts AI concerns [Video]

A Manitoba professor is warning the public after a book on regional mushrooms that he suspects is AI-generated was delisted from Amazon.

Alexandre Brassard, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Université de Saint-Boniface, said a student alerted him to a book available on the e-commerce titan’s site, purporting to offer a guide to Manitoba mushrooms.

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Brassard is a political scientist by trade, but has cultivated a passion for wild mushrooms for over 35 years. He is also the founding president of the Winnipeg Mycological Society.

Needless to say, “Mushrooms of Manitoba: A Fungal Odyssey Through the Heart of Canada” by Jay O. Mark sounded right up his alley.

“It was a cheap book – about $25, so it wasn’t a big risk,” he told CTV News Winnipeg.

But when it arrived, Brassard …