A few days ago, a friend sent me a photo of a new jazz book.
What made this especially interesting is that the author’s last name is Gioia.
What an odd coincidence. Gioia is an uncommon name. If there were another jazz writer who shared my name, I’d know about it.
The book is attributed to two authors—Frank Gioia & Ted Alkyer. As it turns out, Alkyer is also a last name familiar to jazz insiders. Frank Alkyer is editor and publisher of the leading jazz magazine Downbeat.
Another coincidence!
So I reached out to Frank, and asked him if he knew about this book. He was as shocked as me. Alkyer is also an uncommon name.
Neither of us had anything to do with this book. And we don’t know jazz writers with these names—so similar to our own.
You don’t need to be as smart as an Einstein chatbot to figure out what’s happening here. As I told Frank, I’d wager that:
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The book is written by AI.
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The people behind it attribute the book to two authors based on us, switching our first names so that no direct impersonation can be proven—ensuring that the book always comes up in the results when somebody does a search for either of us.
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Needless to say, these two authors do not exist.
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The intent is to fool readers and divert them from anything we've written to some crappy AI book.
Both Frank and I filed complaints with Amazon—and the book is no longer listed there. But it’s still available from other retailers. An audiobook has also been released.