404 Media: “Reference librarian Eddie Kristan said lenders at the library where he works have been asking him to find books that don’t exist without realizing they were hallucinated by AI ever since the release of GPT-3.5 in late 2022. But the problem escalated over the summer after fielding patron requests for the same fake book titles from real authors—the consequences of an AI-generated summer reading list circulated in special editions of the Chicago Sun-Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer earlier this year. At the time, the freelancer told 404 Media he used AI to produce the list without fact checking outputs before syndication. “We had people coming into the library and asking for those authors,” Kristan told 404 Media. He’s receiving similar requests for other types of media that don’t exist because they’ve been hallucinated by other AI-powered features. “It’s really, really frustrating, and it’s really setting us back as far as the community’s info literacy.”  AI tools are changing the nature of how patrons treat librarians, both online and IRL. Alison Macrina, executive director of Library Freedom Project, told 404 Media early results from a recent survey of emerging trends in how AI tools are impacting libraries indicate that patrons are growing more trusting of their preferred generative AI tool or product, and the veracity of the outputs they receive. She said librarians report being treated like robots over library reference chat, and patrons getting defensive over the veracity of recommendations they’ve received from an AI-powered chatbot. Essentially, like more people trust their preferred LLM over their human librarian.

Librarians are reporting this overall atmosphere of confusion and lack of trust they’re experiencing from their patrons,” Macrina told 404. “They’re seeing patrons having seemingly diminished critical thinking and curiosity. They’re definitely running into some of these psychosis and other mental health issues, and certainly seeing the people who are more widely adopting it also being those who have less digital literacy about it and a general sort of loss of retention.” As a reference librarian, Kristan said he spends a lot of time thinking about how fallible the human mind can be, especially as he’s fielding more requests for things that don’t exist than ever before. Fortunately, he’s developed a system: Search for the presumed thing by title in the library catalog. If it’s not in the catalog, he checks the global library catalog WorldCat. If it isn’t there, he starts to get suspicious. “Not being in WorldCat might mean it’s something that isn’t catalogued like a Zine, a broadcast, or something ephemeral, but if it’s parading as a traditional book and doesn’t have an entry in the collective library catalog, it might be AI,” Kristan explained. From there, he might connect the title to a platform like Kindle Direct Publishing—one way AI-generated books enter the market—or the patron will tell him their source is an AI-powered chatbot, which he will have to explain, likely hallucinated the name of the thing they’re looking for. A thing that doesn’t exist…”