Red flags while reading

It's not what you think.

This one’s a little different than my normal writing/publishing content. While it isn’t writing focused, it is writing related. Originally, I was going to send this in my next paid-only letter, but after talking with a few friends, I decided it might be useful to have public.

I’m also getting dire warnings that this might be too long for email. (It’s image heavy.) So if it cuts off in your email, there should be a handy link to click/tap on to finish it. But when I sent a sample email to see how it looked, it sent everything. Shrug emoji!

Obligatory cat photo.

For context, I have to confess to something a little embarrassing: I searched my name on the internet. I was actually checking to see if new trade reviews had popped up for CONFESSIONS FROM THE GROUP CHAT, so I was searching with the “last month” filter on. And while I was skimming through the results, I saw . . . this.

So like . . . that’s a lot of really recent questions about a thirteen-year-old book. Did something happen?

As far as I can tell, no.

But I did find the answers . . . interesting.

Please note: I don’t know anything about GoodNovel. This isn’t a commentary on that site in particular, just the responses I saw when I clicked these search results.

Also note: these are very text-heavy screenshots and I can’t fit everything in alt-text, so if you need me to copy and paste something for you, just let me know and I will do it.

Okay, so obviously these are bots with AI-generated text.

Wait, is it obvious? I’m sure it is to some of you, but for those of you who didn’t clock it right away, let’s talk about why these answers are not coming from real people.

• The first clue is the number of “fans” who seemed to find that question right away. HAH. Let’s be so for real. I know there are people who still love that series and think of it fondly (thank you, ily!), but it’s been thirteen years and I highly doubt anyone is just waiting around the internet for someone to ask who published those books.

• The answers are waaaay more detailed than actual people would give. It’s not a complicated question: who published the books? The answer should be “Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins.” Real people would not go as deep as these comments are. See how they’re all roughy the same length — about four or five lines? That’s not a normal look for comments.

  • Also, at least one real person would say something like, “Just google it omg,” because this is a lazy question.

  • Comment sections just tend to be way more chaotic.

• Okay, note the similarities between the answers:

  • Why are so many of them interested in publisher trivia?

  • Three of them name the sequels for some reason; the other two mention they exist. Whyyy?

• What in the sycophancy is going on with how flattering these answers are attempting to be? They’re nice about my book, sure, but they’re really glazing the publisher hard. Mentioning distribution?? The covers? How the imprint “has a knack for picking gems”? I mean, thanks, I do think my books are gems, but come on. This is just silly. Normal people don’t talk that way about publishers/imprints.

You might have spotted something else in a couple of those comments. Something that didn’t seem quite . . . right, especially if you’re familiar with these books.

And their covers.

Hourglasses? Metallic what now?

Look, the covers are striking, and my readers do love them. The art for INCARNATE got a huge (to me) amount of attention when it was first released — so much that I do think the publisher increased their support of the series based on that response alone.

But note the lack of hourglasses. The typeface is nice, but I wouldn’t call it intricate. And there’s nothing metallic on these; the jacket is regular old gloss.

These are just wrong — and wrong in a way a human wouldn’t be, at least if they were such a huge fan that they had all this knowledge about my publisher.

But Jodi, you might be saying, maybe they’re just kind of odd people who know things about publishers but blanked on the covers?

I mean . . . maybe. But both comments describing the cover? Those comments are giving so much unasked for information, because they’re “obsessed with publishing trivia” — with INCARNATE as a standout — and a “longtime fan” of SFF lit, it just seems unlikely that those type of people would get such a basic detail wrong.

As that first “commenter” says: the covers do have a striking design that became instantly recognizable to my fans. This is simply not a mistake my fans would make.

Anyway, let’s look at another one.

I know these are pretty boring to read, but do try to get through them.

Again, these answers are overly flattering. You know how when something is so sweet it makes your teeth hurt? That’s how I feel reading these comments.

But also . . . they’re wrong.

• INCARNATE and THE ORPHAN QUEEN are not set in the same world.¹

• THE ORPHAN QUEEN does not have reincarnation/soul-based magic.

• I did not write DAUGHTER OF THE BURNING CITY. That was Amanda Foody.

• I did not write SONG OF THE ABYSS. That was Makiia Lucier. Or Emma Hamm. Or Lindsay Avalon. Or one of the other authors who has a novel with that title. Or maybe it was Robert J. Bradshaw, who does have a collection of short stories with that title — but his title is songs plural — and it has the subtitle “A Collection of Thrilling and Terrifying Tales.” Regardless, it wasn’t me.

• PHOENIX OVERTURE is a prequel novella for INCARNATE, so that’s at least accurate if you want more from that world, but I wouldn’t call it a spinoff. For THE ORPHAN QUEEN, the novellas that “bridge the gap” are also prequels. I just released them between the first and second book.

Humans do make mistakes, but these do not seem like mistakes someone who is “deep into the series” would make. You know?

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By now, you might be noticing something else about these comments. There’s the flattery, the errors, the unnecessary information . . . and the tone. The cadence. The beats they tend to hit.

• None of these replies have a unique voice; they all sound the same, which is just wildly unlikely for a comment section.

• Many of these attempt to establish themselves as some kind of authority, either as mega fans or someone with an unusual fixation on publisher data, and that’s also wildly unlikely.

• In general, you tend to see a lot of elevated and hyperbolic language. LLMs (large language models) tends to describe things as “revolutionary” or “earth-shattering” or “electrifying.” Everything is dialed up to 11.

• I see this structure a lot in AI-generated text. (I pulled these from other Q/As I didn’t include here.)

  • “It’s not your typical insta-love; it’s a slow burn, layered with trust issues and personal growth.”

  • “Jodi Meadows isn't just a one-hit wonder. She has a knack for creating complex characters and worlds that feel alive.”

  • “What I love is how these extensions don't just rehash the original; they explore different angles of the mythology.”

• This is also common, though I only spotted it once in this sample.

  • “Digging into publisher details is my weird hobby, so here’s the scoop: Katherine Tegen Books (HarperCollins) put out Jodi Meadows’ 'Incarnate' series.” (Bold mine.)

  • But here’s the twist:

  • Here’s the sitch:

On their own, the language or constructions aren’t a red flag. Obviously the LLMs (Large Language Models) learned them from somewhere! Like em-dashes and beats of three, these are just things people tend to do. But I find LLMs do them excessively.

Also, keep in mind the context. These are comment sections. As I said above, comment sections tend to be a lot more chaotic and casual than this.

Did you notice anything else in them? Anything I didn’t cover?

Back in May, I shared this newsletter with some thoughts about writing in the time of AI. I said that it can be really difficult to know if something is real or AI-generated — and I still think that! But one thing I’ve been doing since then is reading transcripts when I see them. As I mentioned in my recent paid newsletter, I don’t use LLMs, but by reading transcripts, I’m hoping to become better at spotting AI-generated text in the wild.

So with that in mind, I identified these immediately. There were a lot of red flags for me. If it had been only one comment, I might have dismissed it. It would have just been weird. But the volume and context (especially the strange timing) really made it obvious that something hinky was going on.

Please keep in mind that I’m not an expert. I’m just some writer on the internet who finds this interesting. And I want to give you a foundation for spotting AI-generated text, too.

But as I’ve said previously, I want to be cautious about making allegations, especially in situations that aren’t so obvious. I don’t want to normalize accusing people of using genAI without evidence, because that could do real harm. These examples here? They’re just anonymous comments on some site. If I’m wrong, I’ll be embarrassed and apologize, but . . . I don’t think I am.

As always, use your best judgement and try to treat other people the way you’d want them to treat you. Golden rule and all that.

Look, I’m just including this one because I think it’s so ironic that a LLM is warning people not to pirate my stuff. I mean, thanks. I don’t want people to pirate my stuff. I have cats to feed! But considering how many LLMs were trained using pirated books — including mine — well . . . this just seems hollow.

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Upcoming events:

• October 12 11am-5pm — Maryland Renaissance Festival — with Brigid Kemmerer

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Order Incarnate:

• Bookshop.org | Barnes and Noble | Amazon

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• CONFESSIONS FROM THE GROUP CHAT (preorder):
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1. At least, not that I have ever confirmed anywhere (as far as I can remember), and there isn’t anything in the books that should make readers assume they’re set in the same world. They’re very different settings!