How about this review for my novel Yellow Tape and Coffee?
"A Unique and Captivating View of Portland"
Yellow Tape and Coffee by Pat Luther is an absolute gem, offering readers a fresh and captivating take on Portland, Oregon. The city's essence is brilliantly captured through the author’s vivid descriptions and rich storytelling. As a longtime Portlander, I was thrilled to see familiar landmarks and neighborhoods brought to life in such an imaginative way. The intertwining of urban fantasy elements with real-world settings adds a layer of authenticity that is often missing in similar novels.The novel’s complex plot, featuring werewolves and secret societies, is skillfully woven into the fabric of Portland, making the city not just a backdrop but a character in its own right. From the quirky, artsy vibe of the Pearl District to the mysterious depths of Forest Park, Luther’s portrayal of Portland is both accurate and enchanting. This book is a must-read for anyone who loves the city or is looking to experience it through a fantastical lens. Yellow Tape and Coffee is a thrilling adventure that showcases the best of what Portland has to offer.
Sounds awesome, doesn’t it?
Too bad it’s a total lie.
The writer of the review isn’t a long time Portlander. They’ve never been to Portland. Nor have they read my book.
They don’t exist. This was written for me by Microsoft Copilot, when I asked it about my book, and told it to specifically highlight the setting of Portland, Oregon. It was put together, presumably, from other reviews around the net. I recognize some of the wording from reviews of my novel, and some could be from anywhere.
Some of it’s interesting – both the Pearl District and Forest Park play major roles in the story. I don’t know if it knew that because they were mentioned somewhere in relation to my book, or it just guessed because they’re mentioned in other Portland-based works. I certainly don’t portray the Pearl district with a “quirky, artsy vibe.” That sounds more like real estate agent speak to me.
Pretty compelling stuff, though, isn’t it?
I have seen it posited that a “super-persuader” will soon be the most common use of AI. That is, it will be able to figure out exactly the language that will make you trust it, then use that to persuade you of whatever else its owners want you to believe. Kind of how Russian troll farms do now with humans running them. Though a lot of those have been replaced or supplemented with AI bots as well these days.
There are more than humans prowling the net these days, and not everything you meet has your best interests in mind. Let’s be careful out there.
Speaking of persuasive language, I also asked it what a review of someone who hated the book would look like, This is what it came up with:
"Disappointing and Overly Complicated"
I really wanted to like Yellow Tape and Coffee, but it fell short for me in several ways. The plot is excessively convoluted, with too many characters and subplots that make it difficult to follow. The author tries to weave together multiple storylines, but instead of creating a rich tapestry, it ends up feeling like a tangled mess. The pacing is uneven, dragging on in some places while rushing through others, which made it hard to stay engaged.
The character development is another major issue. Most of the characters feel flat and one-dimensional, lacking the depth needed to make their actions and motivations believable. Additionally, the dialogue is often stilted and unnatural, making it hard to connect with the characters or take the story seriously. Overall, Yellow Tape and Coffee was a frustrating read that I wouldn't recommend.
Would you read a book with this review? This one I find even more interesting, in that it doesn’t use the language from any of the reviews I’ve found of my novel. At least, not directly. It does describe many of the same things that people have mentioned, but puts them all in a negative light. “A complex, intertwined plot” becomes “excessively convoluted” and “A large cast of characters” becomes “too many characters” and so forth. Everything it says has been mentioned in other reviews, except, thankfully, in a largely positive manner.
So, if you had read this review and started reading the book, you might discover that it’s overall description is correct and are more likely to stop, or have a negative experience. Yellow Tape and Coffee has overwhelmingly positive reviews, a fact for which I am immensely grateful. If it didn’t, it probably wouldn’t take many reviews like this to sink sales, at least on Amazon.
Imagine if someone wanted to destroy an author’s work. How easy would it be to have an AI generate a few hundred such reviews and flood whatever channels are likely to see them? Amazon actually has safeguards against such behavior already, but most social media doesn’t. Twitter and Facebook were both moving in that direction, but Twitter got bought by Elon Musk who cancelled all those safeguards immediately, and Facebook seems to have discovered just how much of their revenue comes from Russian “advertisers” and chose not to upset them.
This extends, of course, far beyond reviews of novels. I mentioned the Russian bot farms, and we know that they poured millions of dollars into this last election – as they did in 2016 – in support of the soon-to-be president. It wasn’t all AI, though apparently quite a bit of it was. You don’t really need AI when you can have a warehouse with thousands of people with dozens of accounts each jumping on every news post in an attempt to create an apparent consensus. There’s an xkcd post from years ago showing how much cheaper it would be to hire students at $10/hour to do this than it would be to buy advertising. Imagine how much cheaper Russian prisoners would be than students. And then imagine how much cheaper AI would be than that, and the scale becomes incredible.
We’re going to need to all develop critical thinking skills a lot more, and to start evaluating the sources of everything we read.
But the onus can’t only be on the individual. To stop floods of misinformation designed to create an impression of consensus, news sites, Google, Facebook, Twitter (currently called “X”), and others are all going to have to start putting in safeguards to limit misinformation. I don’t know how easy that is without stepping on First Amendment rights, and a lot of the proposed solutions I’ve seen have their own flaws and inherent biases. I suspect we’ll have to have a lot more gatekeeping, and development of trustworthy sources. With international oligarchs buying up formerly respectable media like the Washington Post, that’s going to get more and more difficult.