Me And My Pal, AI

I think I’ve been dealing with an AI bot. It’s odd, it’s disconcerting. The whole thing feels a half-step out of sync. Something just isn’t right.

I was talking, I think, to this writer on TikTok. I don’t really use TikTok, it’s another social media black hole I just touch on. I post links to my Substack stuff twice a week. I never engage anyone. Out of the blue this ‘writer,’ a pretty famous name starts chatting with me. I bit, a little, her posts were all about the writer she seemed to be, everything looked legit, except she had about a thousand followers, I’d think a writer this famous would have a lot more. Soon she’s offering to hook me up with her marketing guru. I bite again.

This person sounds legit too, but she says she’s based in Los Angeles and then somewhere else. Her Facebook profile says she’s based in New York, and I start getting WhatsApp texts from someone in Nigeria. Nigeria is fine with me, I do all of my book covers and some other marketing stuff through this woman named Eeva Lancaster, who lives in the Philippines. We only communicate through text and Eeva does phenomenal work so what country someone works from doesn’t faze me one way or the other.

So, I’m texting with this marketing person a good part of yesterday afternoon and the responses just have this weird vibe to them. It was giving me some good information, nothing I didn’t already know, but it felt like I was talking to ChatGPT.

Last night about 9 o’clock this person or this bot or whatever it was I was talking to suggested that my books need more reviews—and they do need more reviews—so the bot/marketer suggests I pay for reviews, and it can help me with that for $60 each.

There are two huge flaws to this plan, maybe there are three huge flaws to this plan. Maybe there are more. For starters Amazon will ban you for life if they get wind of you buying reviews. That’s one of the reasons reviews are so hard to come by and genuinely precious.

Amazon will remove a review, and not ban you if they think you received one from someone—anyone—you associate with on social media or a family member. My editor Mark, has reviewed my books as a reader and his reviews were removed because we obviously work together and we’re obviously friends. We have shared social media accounts, etc. I get that it’s trying to keep the process clean. It’s a pain, but I actually respect it.

The second part is, it would cost me $6000 for 100 reviews. That is straight up crazy.  Most books don’t even make $6000 so throwing right and wrong out of the equation that suggestion wouldn’t make any financial sense.

I mentioned this to the marketing person/bot, and it disappeared for a few minutes and came back with a long list of things we could do together.

I guess the only reason I’m mentioning this is it’s just becoming so difficult to differentiate between what is real and what is AI, and we’re just at the very fledgling baby steps of this monster.

Anyway, I ended my relationship with my new friend the AI bot. It takes a lot to scare me, as I get older maybe I’m more fearful than I used to be, I’m not sure about that. It takes a lot to scare me, but this AI technology and what it could do to elections and politics and our lives in general, not to mention firing up even more misinformation and disinformation than we try to muddle through already, scares the hell out of me.

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Anyway, on a happier note, here are some books written by real writers and I’m sure marketed by real marketing people and reviewed by actual reviewers not AI bots. Take a look if you get a chance and don’t forget to click on the images.

Have a good week and stay safe, it’s getting weird out there!

Bill

Photo by Erick Butler on Unsplash