I’ve been getting a lot of AI spam on this website lately. I’m not talking old-school bots posting irrelevant garbage about real estate. I’m talking emails and comments from “people” (with first and last names) who pretend to engage with my content— “writing” detailed reviews of Beyond Acacia Ridge (in order to offer “marketing insights” for an out-of-print book), commenting on an obscure but recent blog post in a quasi-organic way that seems to have read and engaged with it while “casually” referring to an AI interactive fiction app, impersonating a scout from some up-and-coming IF hosting platform who has encountered my interactive stories and would love to video chat with me about their company (even if you start out thinking you’re the scout, mark my words…if you lend the robots your words, before long, they will be impersonating you).

And I’m sick of it.

Technology has its uses, sure, but faking human connection to try to con authors struggling to forge a career pathway for themselves in this difficult landscape should not be one of them. We want genuine feedback from real readers, want to hear your impressions of our work in your own words. If you treasure the feeling of burying your nose and your cares in a classic work of literature or studying a painting in a gallery for a glimpse into the mind and heart of another person from across time and space…then please, please, for the love of all your fellow living, breathing, creating animals…strive to keep art and your engagement with it human.

If you are a human and read this blog, I would love to hear from you below. Please reach across the void and let me know I’m not alone here. Thank you.

P.S. – I’ve been disturbed to see AI features subtly infiltrating WordPress lately and would love suggestions for other web hosts (and how to switch). I already moved from Microsoft to LibreOffice recently in an attempt to keep the robots from listening to me, but I don’t think it’s working. Do I need to turn the lights out, take my shingle down, grow fur and fangs, tear free of the web, and run off howling into the woods to escape? Please help.