We all know by now that ChatGPT is full of incorrect data but I trusted it will no go wrong after I asked for a list of sci-fi books recommendations (short stories anthologies in Spanish mostly) including book names, editorial, print year and of course ISBN.
Some of the books do exist but the majority are nowhere to be found. I pick the one that caught my interest the most and contacted the editorial directly after I did not find it in their website or anywhere else.
This is what they replied (Google Translate):
ChatGPT got it wrong.
We don’t have any books with that title.
In the ISBN that has given you the last digit is incorrect. And the correct one (9788477028383) corresponds to “The Holy Fountain” by Henry James.
Nor have we published any science fiction anthologies in the last 25 years.
I quick search in the “old site” shows that others have experienced the same with ChatGPT and ISBN searches… For some reason I thought it will no go wrong in this case, but it did.
Yeah I’ve been noticing this lately too. It’s starting to dredge up random slapped-together information. Last week, for fun, I had it tell me the plot to an obscure N64 series I loved as a kid. I had it do this several times and even provided a full correct plot but the AI simply kept randomly putting information together and I’m not sure where much of it was coming from.
Having it generate book lists (like for learning a programming language) shows problems obvs. It would show me the same book across 4 editions, make up information about the books (unhelpful when you’re looking for a book with exercises in it), and just general…this didn’t feel like a problem a month ago. Maybe it was. I mostly use it to generate writing prompts.
It’s not an encyclopedia or a search engine. Generating writing prompts is a great use for Chatgpt. Research is not.