11/11/2025
This is a copy of a message originating with David Winston, esteemed herbalist, author, founder of an acclaimed school of herbal studies, and one of the original cohort of herbalists who founded the American Herbalists Guild some 40 years ago.
Please, note the jarring statistic: 82% of new herb books on Amazon are evaluated as AI generated, and rife with error. Please be cautious when seeking information, remebering that this misinformation will now be used as source material for escalating and repeating error, spread by ChatGPT generated articles and posts, and armchair influencer “experts.”
Thank you to David Winston, everybody’s-favorite-herbalist Rosemary Gladstar, and Oliver Rathbone of Aeon Books for sounding the alarm.
Dear students and colleagues,
My dear friend Rosemary Gladstar sent this email from British publisher Oliver Rathbone to me this morning and I wanted to share this disturbing information. A reporter from Canada used an AI detection program and found that 82% of new herb books listed on Amazon for the year 2025 are AI generated. They are repetitive, filled with errors and in some cases using names similar to real herbalists (Rosemary Gladwell) to fool and rip off unsuspecting customers. Hopefully if we get this information to as many people as possible, we can help protect people who want to explore herbal medicine from this unethical and possibly dangerous scam.
blessings david
David Winston, RH
Dear Rosemary,
I’m writing because I wanted to draw your attention to a worrisome article that affects everyone in the herbal medicine community, and I suspect you’ll share my concern.
Recently, Originality AI, an AI detector, published an extensive study of available herbalism titles on Amazon (https://originality.ai/blog/likely-ai-herbal-remedies-books-study) and found 82% of them were created by AI. Of course, no AEON titles were found to be AI generated (as you know, we only publish authentic works), but that’s not the concern here. Instead, what’s alarming is how the proliferation of such works puts all herbalists at risk.
Certainly, herbal practitioners have faced a lot of societal prejudice and legal obstacles, and it’s taken significant collective work to earn the respect and trust of the wider public. Unfortunately, the explosion of computer-generated herbalism books containing not just false but also dangerous advice may lead to a larger backlash against all herbalists.
Obviously, we cannot single-handedly stop this. But we can push back against this machine logic, and we’d love your help with taking the first step.
We’ll be crafting a statement that includes responses from our authors and others about the dangers of AI herbal texts, and we’d be honoured if you’d send us a short (25-100 word) statement regarding how AI herbal texts affect you and the wider herbal medicine community. We’ll then collect these together and ask you to help us publicise it once it’s published.
Many thanks for taking the time to read and consider this matter.
All the very best,
Oliver Rathbone
Publisher
Aeon Books
oliver@aeonbooks.co.uk
DW-CHS | P.O. Box 417 | Riegelsville, PA 18077 US
“
Is the Herbal Remedies book you’re reading on Amazon real or an AI-generated fake? Discover the concerning impact of AI on herbal remedy books published on Amazon in 2025.
