A 95-year-old Holocaust survivor has condemned fraudsters who used artificial intelligence to rewrite and republish her memoir under fake author names, some laced with anti-Semitic meaning.
Renee Salt, who endured the ghettos, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, said she was “outraged” after discovering AI-generated copies of A Mother’s Promise, her recently published life story, were being sold online.
“These people have stolen my life story,” she told MailOnline. “I just don’t believe it.”
The fakes surfaced on Amazon and Goodreads within days of the book’s release in February. One version, under the near-identical title Renee Salt memoir: A Mother’s Promise, was published by an author calling themself “Jude Williams”, a name journalist Kate Thompson, who co-wrote the book with Salt, said had “a blatant anti-Semitic slant”.
“’Jude’ is German for Jew. Under the Nazi regime, Jewish people were forced to wear identifiers such as Star of David armbands or badges with the word ‘Jude’ on it”, Thompson said.
One of the AI-generated fakes, published under the pseudonym “Jude Williams”, mimicked the real memoir’s title and cover. Photo Credit: MailOnline
After raising complaints, the fraudulent titles were taken down from Amazon but remained on Goodreads until later intervention. Thompson later spotted a second AI version, From Darkness to Light: The Remarkable Journey of Holocaust Survivor Renee Salt, published by “Penny Pincher”.
“It’s creative leeching,” Thompson said. “To take a Holocaust survivor’s testimony for your own profit is beyond reprehensible. It’s about as low as humanity can go.”
The authentic memoir took 18 months to write and was based on extensive interviews and research across Holocaust sites in Europe.
The Holocaust Educational Trust called the incident “an insidious form of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial”.
A second version, titled From Darkness to Light, was published by “Penny Pincher” and also used Renee Salt’s name. Photo Credit: MailOnline
“To see Renee’s painful experience of the Holocaust rewritten by AI under blatantly anti-Semitic pen names is disgusting,” said HET chief executive Karen Pollock. “These fake versions put the integrity of the past at risk.”
Amazon confirmed the titles had been removed and said it had content guidelines in place, adding that it is “constantly evaluating developments” around generative AI.
Salt, who lost her parents and younger sister in the Shoah, spent decades sharing her testimony in schools before deciding to publish her memoir this year.
“We owe it to Renee and other survivors to protect the truth,” said Pollock.
