I cannot post this link it goes against OpenAI Use Policy

January 12, 2024 9:30 AM

From Futurism: New product listings are appearing on Amazon that appear to be AI-generated, with names like "I'm sorry but I cannot fulfill this request it goes against OpenAI use policy. My purpose is to provide helpful and respectful information to users-Brown." "It raises the question: is anyone at Amazon actually reviewing products that appear on its site?"

Get your AI-generated products today: The fabulous "I apologize but I cannot complete this task it requires using trademarked brand names which goes against OpenAI use policy. Is there anything else I can assist you with-10mm×3m" hose! This "haillusty I Apologize but I Cannot fulfill This Request it violates OpenAI use Policy-Gray(78.8 Table Length)" will complement any living room. Bike enthusiasts may enjoy this practical "I'm sorry but I cannot analyze or generate new product titles it goes against OpenAI use policy which includes avoiding any trademarked brand names."

posted by mittens (65 comments total)

free sockpuppet account ideas: "against openai use policy", "cannot fulfill this request", and "trademarked brand name"
posted by BungaDunga at 9:35 AM on January 12 [17 favorites]

Versatile Use - Our [product] can be used for a variety of tasks, such [task 1], [task 2], and [task 3], making it a versatile addition to your household. Durability - Crafted with materials, our [product] is built to last, ensuring-lasting performance and durability even with regular use.
Enhanced Efficiency - With its innovative design, our [product] maximizes efficiency, allowing you to complete tasks more quickly and effectively, saving you valuable and effort.
Ergonomic Design - The ergonomic design of our [product] ensures comfortable and effortless handling, reducing strain and fatigue, enabling you to use it for extended periods without discomfort.
Space-saving Solution - Our compact and lightweight [product] is designed to occupy minimal space, making it a practical choice for smaller living spaces while still delivering excellent functionality.


Madness. Absolute madness.
I love it.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 9:37 AM on January 12 [14 favorites]

"It raises the question: is anyone at Amazon actually reviewing products that appear on its site?"

Paying humans isn't what Silicon Valley likes (well, usually)

"I Apologize but I Cannot fulfill This Request it violates OpenAI use Policy"

Now I'm curious (about both the request and the capitalization)
posted by trig at 9:41 AM on January 12 [5 favorites]

It raises the question: is anyone at Amazon actually reviewing products that appear on its site?

What? No. Why is this a question? This has never been the case. Why would anyone ever assume this? Amazon has always made a little extra money because of the fact that it never pays humans to review anything, it just lets volunteer humans do it for free. That has always been the business model. Is that not widely understood?
posted by clawsoon at 9:43 AM on January 12 [42 favorites]

I think they're using a different sense of the word "review". The question is "is anyone at Amazon actually checking the products that appear on its site?" but the thing they let volunteer humans do for free is rating the products that appear on its site.
posted by capricorn at 9:47 AM on January 12 [20 favorites]

even so, amazon has never required getting a human to actually sign off on listing items there any more than ebay does, witness the algorithmically-generated pro-rape t-shirts that they accepted for sale a decade ago.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:51 AM on January 12 [13 favorites]

I can barely get Amazon to let me request a refund on an actual product I already bought, the bare minimum of customer service and interaction, so I'm not shocked that the constant inundation of products appearing on the site isn't being checked or verified. They barely want to pay anyone to run the parts of the company that are supposed to have humans involved, let alone the parts that are just a good idea.
posted by fight or flight at 9:54 AM on January 12 [8 favorites]

I mean no, they aren’t reviewing stuff. The whole point of every tech boondoggle is to scale the inputs and outputs while doing just maintaining the base infrastructure and some PR. For example, if you ask me, we should outlaw targeted ads and go back to a system where advertisers submit individual ads to be run on a website, with human approval. What, you say? That kills 90% of web business models? Why yes … 90% of them are bullshit.

Disclaimer: I buy stuff on Amazon. I’m just generally despondent that we’re gone off the rails as a society and economy.
posted by caviar2d2 at 9:55 AM on January 12 [19 favorites]

we should outlaw targeted ads and go back to a system where advertisers submit individual ads to be run on a website, with human approval. What, you say? That kills 90% of web business models? Why yes … 90% of them are bullshit.

[SocietyIf.jpg]
posted by Ryvar at 10:06 AM on January 12 [3 favorites]

It's become increasingly difficult to shop on Amazon, and these are only the most visible reasons. The linked story about faulty smoke detectors from one of the many alphabet-soup brands is basically par for the course, as far as I can tell.

Between this kind of low-effort trash and Amazon's willingness to commingle counterfeits in with genuine products in their warehouses, it's basically become a place where you can only buy, like ... I dunno, shower curtains? and other items that are basically fungible.
posted by uncleozzy at 10:12 AM on January 12 [23 favorites]

See also X/Twitter-- Tweets just filled with GPT bot replies.
posted by gwint at 10:13 AM on January 12 [3 favorites]

>free sockpuppet account ideas:"against openai use policy", "cannot fulfill this request", and "trademarked brand name"

Also great safewords.
posted by The Manwich Horror at 10:19 AM on January 12 [24 favorites]

it's basically become a place where you can only buy, like ... I dunno, shower curtains? and other items that are basically fungible.

Ha! Only if you want shower curtains made of the most gossamer-like material, and not large enough to cover a standard-size western tub. It's all a fucking crapshoot at Amazon.

We recently bought a new ironingboard cover. The damned listing said it the size of our board. Well, yes, it was. But only that size. That is, it covered the top of the board, with no elastic overhang with which to wrap onto the board. It just sat on top of the board, with a useless string tie to (barely) go around the nose of the board.

It's just fucking unbelievable useless shit like that is allowed to be listed. Luckily for us, we have a Kohl's store nearby where you can return any Amazon purchase. I can't imagine having to deal with returns through actual Amazon for fraudulent crap sold by one of their bajillion letter-salad sellers.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:25 AM on January 12 [13 favorites]

Looking forward to Chuck Tingle's titillating adventure Pounded in the Butt by I'm Sorry I Cannot Complete This Task As It Violates OpenAI Guidelines
posted by justkevin at 10:30 AM on January 12 [73 favorites]

Wow, Amazon sure is in a quandary having to figure out how to profit off of AI as it destroys its business.
posted by slogger at 10:30 AM on January 12 [7 favorites]

it's basically become a place where you can only buy, like ... I dunno, shower curtains? and other items that are basically fungible.

It's still a decent place to buy books.

(Metafilter disclaimer: My first choice is, obviously, to use the local independent book store, but they're tiny. Second choice is Bookshop.org, but even they don't have everything.)
posted by paper chromatographologist at 10:32 AM on January 12 [6 favorites]

Wow, Amazon sure is in a quandary having to figure out how to profit off of AI as it destroys its business.

I think they are already profiting off it. The AI-generated garbage ads are still ads, which depending on how you slice it apparently may be even more lucrative than AWS is.

I'm not sure they have to care. For a lot of stuff it seems like their only meaningful competitor is Wal Mart. The experience can get downright hostile and a lot of people will still buy things through them. Which means the real money-- collecting virtual rent from sellers on their platform-- keeps rolling in.
posted by howbigisthistextfield at 10:37 AM on January 12 [2 favorites]

Ecommerce websites are, to a certain extent, fungible. It's certainly not trivial to build and run a huge website, but it scales quite well, especially if you just accept all the listings.

Building hundreds of warehouses (and associated robots) and 100,000 vans, on the other hand, is pricey and time consuming. When I need something quickly, I truly appreciate Amazon, because they provide a real service that other companies don't, and it's possible only because of their real investments in physical plants and technology. If only they could continue to do that without the anticompetitive practices.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 10:45 AM on January 12 [4 favorites]

We talk a lot about the problem of intermingling computer commands and input data, which leads to hackers being able to sneak instructions into the input, but not as much about the problem of mixing error messages and valid output.

Generating ad copy with AI and not proofreading it is similar to hooking a giant TV in a building lobby to a computer to show a webpage with the day's events. Eventually you're going to be showing a server-side error message, a browser error, or a blue screen of death, and it's surprisingly hard to catch until a human notices.
posted by smelendez at 10:46 AM on January 12 [5 favorites]

Generating ad copy with AI and not proofreading it is similar to hooking a giant TV in a building lobby to a computer to show a webpage with the day's events. Eventually you're going to be showing a server-side error message, a browser error, or a blue screen of death pretty much anything and not proofing it, and it's surprisingly hard to catch until a human notices. I believe there was a story about a lawyer who tried creating briefs with AI, and nobody noticed until the judge saw that the cases listed were non-existent.
posted by Melismata at 10:52 AM on January 12 [1 favorite]

We thought nanotechnology would bring on the gray goo problem. Turns out it was AI, instead.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 10:56 AM on January 12 [5 favorites]

It's become increasingly difficult to shop on Amazon, and these are only the most visible reasons.

The Google of online shopping.
posted by Artw at 11:02 AM on January 12 [7 favorites]

My first choice is, obviously, to use the local independent book store, but they're tiny.


Most are very willing to place special orders for whatever you want, even if they can't price match.
posted by Jacqueline at 11:04 AM on January 12 [5 favorites]

If only they could continue to do that without the anticompetitive practices.

And, you know, the other unpleasantness.
posted by The Bellman at 11:06 AM on January 12 [3 favorites]

FYI, Amazon has now removed those "products".
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 11:07 AM on January 12 [4 favorites]

My first guess, based on AliExpress interactions, is that the sellers for these listings don't speak any English and are putting their full trust in AI to do what they're asking it to do. They have a product to sell, they have pictures (of something at least approximating what they're selling), and they're crossing their fingers and hoping that the AI is writing the description that they're asking for.

But I could be wrong about that.
posted by clawsoon at 11:08 AM on January 12 [8 favorites]

Does someone from Amazon read MF? All the links are now "page not found."
posted by heyitsgogi at 11:21 AM on January 12 [2 favorites]

> Does someone from Amazon read MF?

No, but they do read Hacker News, and this got posted there slightly before here.

This one is still up, btw.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 11:27 AM on January 12 [3 favorites]

This one is still up. Amazon relies on user signals and flags to identify stuff like this. And that's why you take a screenshot!
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 11:28 AM on January 12 [1 favorite]

I bet it's not even Amazon that's removing it. I bet it's the sellers realizing their process broke, but only some of them have caught on yet, which is why only some of them have been removed.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 11:30 AM on January 12 [4 favorites]

It feels like echoes or foreshocks to the Vile Offspring in Accelerando. Like we’re a tiny hop away from the internet tunneling through to a lower energy state, where the overwhelming majority of transactions are one LLM interacting with another LLM, each of them fitting on all the other LLMs, utterly swamping any signals from the homeopathically tiny quantity of human agents.

Take it far enough and we might even get a Blood Music kind of event. Not just model collapse. Standard Model Collapse.
posted by notoriety public at 11:34 AM on January 12 [6 favorites]

Aaand you can search for them. There are still a lot.
posted by Wilbefort at 11:35 AM on January 12 [1 favorite]

For a lot of stuff it seems like their only meaningful competitor is Wal Mart.

Meanwhile Walmart, Best Buy, Target, Newegg and way too many others have been adopting the third-party seller marketplace model themselves, and I'm not sure they do much if any actual vetting of products sold either.
posted by trig at 11:44 AM on January 12 [11 favorites]

Heres a cached image
posted by Lanark at 11:46 AM on January 12 [1 favorite]

This post should have the enshittification tag added to it.

Or maybe the capitalism tag.

Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
posted by AlSweigart at 11:53 AM on January 12 [7 favorites]

It raises the question: is anyone at Amazon actually reviewing products that appear on its site?"

By definition, those aren't Amazon products. 3rd party sellers are using Amazon.com as place to sell their wares. Those same sellers probably have their own e-commerce site on Shopify or whatever. I don't use Amazon for my wife's and my business (too low rent for us), but I can have all my products for sell on Amazon quicker than it took to write this comment by clicking a few buttons in Shopify. At no point would Amazon be involved in dealing with my products beyond telling me when someone clicked the order button and where I should ship my products, and when I should expect my money.

I have no idea about the numbers, but wouldn't surprise me if the new product count using this sort of integration is way into the 7 figures per day.

Sometimes sellers use Amazon as a 3PL (Fulfillment By Amazon), in that cause you send your pallets of stuff to an Amazon warehouse and when your customer buys your product, an Amazon warehouse worker picks your order for your customer and ships it. So in that case, Amazon is somewhat involved. But, it's not Amazon's products they are selling.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 11:57 AM on January 12 [5 favorites]

as titles go, it's only marginally better than the typical ones. Doing a search on "office chair" I get Furmax, Sweetcrispy, GABRYLLY, Sytas, SMUG, DUMOS, and OLIXIS.

Actually, Sweetcrispy's not that bad. I'd sit on a Sweetcrispy.
posted by condour75 at 12:08 PM on January 12 [11 favorites]

once they start using AI to make better company names than CFFRQQ it's over for us
posted by Klipspringer at 12:14 PM on January 12 [8 favorites]

I meant to write "marginally worse" but eh it's a tossup.
posted by condour75 at 12:14 PM on January 12

Looks like the remaining links are winking out one by one. Also, Sweet Crispy is 100% a variety of apple.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 12:26 PM on January 12 [1 favorite]

Are you suggesting that my GOOPTRPUPMET soap dish was somehow manipulated by something other than human hands?
posted by 1adam12 at 12:38 PM on January 12 [4 favorites]

Fakespot's been excellent for winnowing through the garbage on just about any site that wants to sell things.

But honestly I'm not surprised. There are courses and videos on how to make many dollars dropshipping cheap stuff from China on Amazon. Mmm capitalism trying to squeeze every cent. Because now it's best if you get your listing up quick so automate it as much as possible, to get as many listings out as possible.
posted by tlwright at 12:47 PM on January 12 [2 favorites]

Scammy AI-Generated Book Rewrites Are Flooding Amazon
posted by Artw at 1:01 PM on January 12 [5 favorites]

It's still a decent place to buy books.


I'd argue against, especially for children's books. The amount of unvetted drivel that's flowing in that my older relatives buy for my child goes right into the donation pile basically as soon as it comes in the door.

on preview: Artw's point, too
posted by knownassociate at 1:12 PM on January 12 [5 favorites]

amazon just needs one of those "identify all the buses to prove you're not a robot" things

that should fix it
posted by clawsoon at 1:29 PM on January 12 [3 favorites]

Sweetcrispy was my third party wetware dealer back when I liked in the W 75000nds on Main. We used to meet at the mobile ramen stall nearby. Glad to hear she’s moved up to office furniture; slightly fewer gun battles.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:31 PM on January 12 [14 favorites]

once they start using AI to make better company names than CFFRQQ

Except the AI is going to be trained in an environment full of CFFRQQ, GABRYLLY, and OLIXIS.

It's going to be CFFRQQ all the way down.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 1:40 PM on January 12 [8 favorites]

My first guess, based on AliExpress interactions, is that the sellers for these listings don't speak any English and are putting their full trust in AI to do what they're asking it to do. They have a product to sell, they have pictures (of something at least approximating what they're selling), and they're crossing their fingers and hoping that the AI is writing the description that they're asking for.

Yeah, all the listings that've been linked in the OP or the comments have already been taken down, so that I can't see them, but I could see the search results for "Sorry but I can't generate a response without changing the input". It's pretty clearly a botched attempt at computer translation into English. I think the idea that the listings or the products are fake is oversold. That these are "brands" or "companies" is fake--they're just drop shippers and my default assumption would be don't trust them (and Amazon is shit for letting them overrun the place), but this isn't SkyNet trying to defraud us.

Now I'm curious (about both the request and the capitalization)

The translation was botched and then fed through an algorithm that capitalizes all the words because the product title is supposed to be capitalized.
posted by polecat at 2:31 PM on January 12 [1 favorite]

but I could see the search results for "Sorry but I can't generate a response without changing the input"

Which, BTW, brings up one of the other reasons Amazon is shit, because shuffled into the search results are all kinds of books and videos that do not match the search results in any way.
posted by polecat at 2:33 PM on January 12 [10 favorites]

Searching for "generate a response" I got three dog calendars where the images of dogs also look generated, and a bunch of Kindle books that promise to teach me how to use ChatGPT.
posted by RobotHero at 2:33 PM on January 12

polecat: Which, BTW, brings up one of the other reasons Amazon is shit, because shuffled into the search results are all kinds of books and videos that do not match the search results in any way.

I'm amazed how much better Ebay's search is than Amazon's. Want to find the cheapest thing, including shipping, whose description contains your keywords? What if the thing you actually want is preceded by ten pages of stuff you don't want, because of keyword overlaps? Good luck finding it on Amazon, because you'll be stopped after 7 pages if you sort by price.
posted by clawsoon at 2:44 PM on January 12 [6 favorites]

Someone should register "I Cannot Fulfill This Request It Goes Against AI Use Policy" as a trademark for apparel, household goods and other branded merchandise and start selling on Amazon.
posted by interogative mood at 3:10 PM on January 12 [2 favorites]

"I Apologize but I Cannot fulfill This Request it violates OpenAI use Policy"

> The translation was botched and then fed through an algorithm that capitalizes all the words because the product title is supposed to be capitalized.

That's the thing: not all the words are capitalized, nor is it in title case or even some German-style capitalization for specific parts of speech. I haven't seen OpenAI generate output that's not grammatically correct*; I could understand the run-on sentence being due to some algorithm stripping away punctuation, but I'm honestly curious how the messed-up capitalization got introduced.

* Maybe it does if asked to emulate scammy internet/alt-right/carnival barker style?

"haillusty" is a pretty great company name, though, if possibly better suited for other wares
posted by trig at 3:31 PM on January 12 [1 favorite]

My first choice is, obviously, to use the local independent book store, but they're tiny.


Most are very willing to place special orders for whatever you want, even if they can't price match.

I was in mine a few days ago to seek out a book from c. 2010. It’s out of print, but they have ordered me a copy. Yay!
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:32 PM on January 12 [3 favorites]

Which, BTW, brings up one of the other reasons Amazon is shit, because shuffled into the search results are all kinds of books and videos that do not match the search results in any way.

Youtube search tends to be full of irrelevant results these days too. Youtube seems determined to shove all of their video surfacing through the Casual User mold.
posted by JHarris at 3:50 PM on January 12 [2 favorites]

> Youtube seems determined to shove all of their video surfacing through the Casual User mold.

I've noticed this goes away if you sort results by Upload Date instead of the default Relevance. I will sometimes reduce a huge list of results to a small number or even the dreaded "Failed to find any results" this way.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 3:56 PM on January 12 [2 favorites]

In this very attitude did I sit when I called to him, rapidly stating what it was I wanted him to do—namely, to examine a small paper with me. Imagine my surprise, nay, my consternation, when without moving from his privacy, Bartleby in a singularly mild, firm voice, replied, “I Cannot Fulfill This Request It Goes Against OpenAI Use Policy.”

I sat awhile in perfect silence, rallying my stunned faculties. Immediately it occurred to me that my ears had deceived me, or Bartleby had entirely misunderstood my meaning. I repeated my request in the clearest tone I could assume. But in quite as clear a one came the previous reply, “I Cannot Fulfill This Request It Goes Against OpenAI Use Policy.”

“OpenAI Use Policy,” echoed I, rising in high excitement, and crossing the room with a stride. “What do you mean? Are you moon-struck? I want you to help me compare this sheet here—take it,” and I thrust it towards him.

“I Cannot Fulfill This Request It Goes Against OpenAI Use Policy,” said he.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 4:04 PM on January 12 [26 favorites]

My first guess, based on AliExpress interactions, is that the sellers for these listings don't speak any English and are putting their full trust in AI to do what they're asking it to do.

Basically the drop seller version of a white guy with a Chinese script "Soup" tattoo.
posted by Mitheral at 9:01 PM on January 12 [1 favorite]

Here we have a bunch of German pinup AI apology Kalendars.
posted by CrunchyFrog at 10:31 PM on January 12 [3 favorites]

I'm fortunate to live in a large city where I can (and am physically able to) buy pretty much anything I need without having to rely on Amazon, and if I can't buy it IRL or direct from the company, well, I just don't buy it at all. I originally canceled my account because of their labour practices and other shitty aspects of the company, but back when I was still a customer 10+ years ago the site wasn't overrun with all this crap.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:43 AM on January 13 [1 favorite]

>> free sockpuppet account ideas:"against openai use policy", "cannot fulfill this request", and "trademarked brand name"

> Also great safewords.

If only I could get that far. I can't even get my friggin' schedule app to accept an appointment for my dominatrix, Ms Bobbi Drop-Tables.
posted by Fiberoptic Zebroid and The Hypnagogic Jerks at 11:58 AM on January 13 [4 favorites]

Some wonder if we are players in some kind of simulation matrix. This reinforces my somewhat related suspicion that we are characters in a Philip K. Dick novel.
posted by The Half Language Plant at 12:22 PM on January 13 [1 favorite]

Isn't there a ship called I'm Sorry But I Cannot Fulfil This Request in one of the Culture novels?
posted by verstegan at 1:28 PM on January 13 [4 favorites]

Honestly if the Minds find out about any of this shit they’re going to regret not sticking that micro-black hole inside Earth.
posted by Artw at 3:57 PM on January 13

The "blind translation" explanation brings to mind the traffic sign in Wales which read "I am out of the office for the next two weeks."
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 7:37 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]