Do we want AI generated materials in our library collections?

Over the last year or so I’ve started to notice eBooks in my EBSCO subscription that are almost certainly AI generated. They come from lesser known publishers, the text has the technical but vacuous AI style, and the authors are as unknown as the publisher. I keep an eye out for these so that I can avoid them when buying new eBooks, but should I really have to do that? Shouldn’t companies like EBSCO be preventing AI generated texts like these from being a part in their offerings? I know AI use is going to be part of creating new material, but there needs to be some kind of quality control.

This problem has started to creep beyond no name publishers in EBSCO. Large companies like Springer and Elsevier have started to include “AI-based” works into their content. You can read more about this in the article “AI Slop Coming to a Library Near You” from Inside Higher Ed.

The article above concludes with a call for librarians to bring this problems up directly with vendors like EBSCO, which I know I’ll be doing. Nothing could do more to undermine trust in libraries than offering the same kind of AI junk that we caution students about.