AI floods Amazon with strange political books ahead of Canada election

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Canada has seen a boom in political books created with generative artificial intelligence, adding to concerns about how new technologies are affecting the information voters receive during the election campaign.

Prime Minister Mark Carney was the subject of at least 16 books published in March and listed on Amazon.com, according to a review of the site on April 16. Five of those were published on a single day.

In total, some 30 titles were published about Carney this year and made available on Amazon — but most were taken down from the site after inquiries from Bloomberg News.

One author, James A. Powell, put his name to at least three books about the former central banker, who’s now leading the Liberal Party and is narrowly favoured to win the election. Among the titles that Amazon removed: “Carney’s Code: Climate Capitalism, Digital Currencies, and the Technocratic Takeover of the Global Economy — Inside Mark Carney’s Blueprint for the Post-Democratic World.”

Another book by Powell called ‘Mark Carney: The Unelected Power Broker of the 21st Century,’ which is still available, begins with an error, falsely claiming Carney graduated from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Others veer into the surreal: one sports the title ‘Mark Carney Biography: The Rise Of The Tin Man Who Deserve Respect For Building A Better World For All’ and an image of a man who isn’t the Liberal leader.

The episode underscores that even the world’s biggest technology companies are struggling to keep up with how AI is accelerating disruption of media and public affairs online. Canadian election officials have been worried about the potential for foreign interference and the impacts of fake and manipulated news articles, social media posts and other materials ahead of the April 28 vote.

Facebook and X have hosted scam advertisements that are made to look like political news stories. A China-backed network used the social media app WeChat to push stories about Carney in a bid to influence the electorate, according to Canada’s Privy Council Office, citing the government’s task force on election threats. That task force has also spotted an effort to use WeChat, TikTok and other apps to disparage Joe Tay, a Conservative Party candidate in Toronto who has been critical of China’s governance practices in Hong Kong.

AI Book Creator

Seattle-based Amazon operates a self-publishing service called Kindle Direct Publishing. It asks some authors who use it to verify their identities and requires them accurately inform the company if their content is AI-generated.

Amazon has “proactive and reactive methods that help us detect content that violates our guidelines, whether AI-generated or not,” spokesperson Lindsay Hamilton said by email.

Amazon doesn’t force authors to share with users whether they’ve used AI. But it may do so in the future, the company added in a statement. “We are constantly evaluating developments that impact that experience, which includes the rapid evolution and expansion of generative AI tools,” it said.

Some authors are openly using and promoting AI.

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One writer named Antoine Loiseau published a book about Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre in February. Since then, he has has published 146 more, on subjects including other famous Canadians like Celine Dion, as well as chem-trails and cryptocurrencies. His total roster on Amazon was 205 books.

Poilievre, the only candidate with a shot of beating Carney in the election, is the subject of six books on Amazon since the start of 2025.

Alex Bugeja is even more prolific. In January, he also published a biography of Poilievre — adding to about 550 other titles on everything from the history of the British empire, pest control, air fryer recipes, and a history of hamburgers.

Bugeja is founder of a Texas-based AI and online advertising company called Traffikoo, which has a project called Qyx AI Book Creator. The back cover of his Poilievre book says that it was made with the help of that tool, and that Bugeja hopes it inspires readers to try it for themselves.

Reached by email, Bugeja said his books reflect his personal interests, and that he discloses in “most” of them that they are authored with the help of AI. He said the work is drafted by the AI tool but edited by him.

“Some customers buying those books on Amazon did in fact leave negative reviews there that were solely focused on the fact that AI was involved in the books’ creation,” Bugeja said. “That isn’t really fair in my view.” He said he’d coined a word for that — “raicism.”

Powell and Loiseau couldn’t be reached for comment.

In March, the US-based Authors Guild complained about the surge of “low-quality sham ‘books’ on Amazon” that risk hurting sales of books by real authors. The organization said it’s lobbying for laws to require AI-generated text content to be labeled.