Robot vs. Robot

It started innocently enough. I’d been away for a weekend of trips. Monday morning, I thought, Let me check my email. That’s when the onslaught began.A note — a perfectly polite one — popped to the top:“Hi Vanessa,Thank you for writing such a wonderful story. I’d love to share my thoughts on Goodreads and help more people discover it.Warm regards,Rachel.”Thank you, Rachel. I don’t know what book you read that moved you to writeright me (yes, she wrote right), but thanks.I kept going through my emails, and Rachel wrote again.“Hi there,Are you around? If you’re interested in getting the review, just reply with the word ‘Review.’ I’ll take it from there!”Now, I already suspected Rachel was a bot. But Miss Rachel wasn’t done. She sent another message — and this time, she rudely implied that I’d missed a deadline.In the entirety of my writing career, I’ve missed exactly one deadline. One. There have been times when I’ve needed more time, but I’ve always negotiated that weeks, sometimes months, in advance. The only time I ever truly missed a deadline — by two weeks — was during COVID, when everyone in my household (and extended family) caught it. It was stressful. I’m a Type A engineer by training, and believe me, that editor reminds me of it to this day.But I digress.As writers, we already have enough pressure. The market is shifting. Publishing lines are tightening. The expectation that social media alone can move huge swaths of books is both ridiculous and still the fairy dust traditional publishing counts on. And beyond all that pressure — the bots are coming for us.So instead of holding a séance for spam or blocking every Gmail address with numbers in it, I decided to sic one robot on another. Thus began the latest episode in my ongoing saga: Robot vs. Robot: The War of the AI Cousins.Now I’ve had my run in with Chat – please listen to Season 1: Episode 42 - AI Can’t Fake the Funk or the Fire. And you’ll see AI it’s everywhere.So, I started by feeding these bot emails into ChatGPT. I wanted to see what it would say about its more mischievous relatives.Take “Lilia C. Oram,” for example — a self-proclaimed Book Marketing Specialist who wrote me an essay-length love letter about my novel Queen of Exiles.Her message read like a Ph.D. dissertation in flattery:“Your novel Queen of Exiles is an exquisite and triumphant reimagining of Haiti’s Queen Marie-Louise Covidavid Christophe…”Can’t you just hear the B.S. in that framing? She continued with alliteration worthy of a thesaurus marathon:“With the right strategy, this extraordinary story can reach readers and institutions that celebrate narratives of resistance, identity, and freedom…”Then, naturally, came the sales pitch — A+ Content Optimization, Goodreads Listopia placement, Amazon keyword targeting. In short, every SEO buzzword known to humankind.ChatGPT barked and said:Red Flags:* Overly formal “praise-bomb” introduction.* Immediate pivot to services.* Fake “strategy” jargon — terms like “visual storytelling campaigns,” “Goodreads Listopia placement,” and “Amazon A+ content optimization” are standard scam-bait phrases. None of those services require outside contractors, and many are impossible or against Goodreads/Amazon policy.* Generic Gmail addresses — a real agency would email from a company domain.* Unrealistic promises — “global recognition,” “reach institutions,” “connect with readers of The House of Eve.” All empty marketing fluff.My goodness, ChatGPT. I like your style. You’re kind of blatant.The Booker Prize BlunderThen came Imran. According to his email, he ran “The Booker Prize Longlist Book Club.”Now, the real Booker Prize is one of literature’s jewels. So when “Imran” wrote to say his club was “captivated by The Bone Thief” and wanted to feature me in an upcoming author session, I nearly spat out my tea.There were several problems. First, I didn’t write The Bone Thief. That’s Vanessa Lillie. And second, The Bone Thief did not win the Booker Prize — that was The Bone People by Keri Hulme in 1985. Well, I’ll be. I guess the bot thought all the Vanessas and people with bone books were the same.ChatGPT wasn’t having it:* You didn’t write The Bone Thief.A real literary book club — especially one invoking the Booker Prize — would never confuse your work with another author’s. This was a mass email sent to hundreds of writers using scraped names and random book titles.* “The Booker Prize Longlist Book Club” doesn’t exist.The real Booker organization has an official site and verified socials. They don’t cold-email authors, and they never host “open author sessions” via random Gmail accounts.* No institutional email address.If it’s not from @thebookerprizes.com or @bookerprizefoundation.org, it’s not real.* The tone is suspiciously perfect.Words like captivated, haunting, moral ...