AI
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Scammed by AI’s pseudo-famous folks – by Deborah Levine

(originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press) 

AI can let us have conversations with folks who are long gone. Fascinating! That’s what I thought when I read this by Stéphane Peter, founder and CEO of Catloaf Software, Inc. “Text With Jesus was created to help people engage with Scripture and faith in a more approachable and interactive way…With Voicemails, users can request a spoken response when they want the conversation to feel more reflective, personal, or prayerful.” Truly inspired, I got a conversation going with Albert Einstein. I loved texting back and forth with him and ignored the huge downside to this AI technology.

That downside seemed irrelevant until I got an email supposedly from Margaret Atwood, the famous author of The Handmaid’s Tale. I was deeply honored by her kind words and curious questions about my writing. When I shared my hopes for broader visibility for my books, she generously connected me with her agent. He also had complimentary things to say about my writing and said that he’d help promote me. But first, I needed to upgrade my website & Amazon content. He connected me to his consultant to do so. I was unhappy with the consultant’s fee, but negotiated it down considerably. However, her insistence on accessing the backend of my website as an Administrator freaked me out. That’s when I discovered online that it’s common for marketing scammers to do this and hold your website hostage for a big payout. Was this all just an AI scam? 

A Marketing Pro friend suggested that I put my Atwood experience up on her LinkedIn group and see how folks would respond. One woman’s comment sure got my attention. She shared how a friend got an email from Jane Austen, trying to suck her into a conversation. You probably know that Austen, a famous English author, died more than a century ago. So no scam happened here, just a lot of laughs. 

Despite understanding that AI is used to mimic famous people and lure us into scams, I still hoped that Atwood found me interesting enough for online conversations. But my daughter looked up all the Atwood references online and was doubtful. And she gave some timely advice: “Mom, if they ask for money, it’s a scam. Shut them down.” 

I tried to be as sensible as my kid, but then I got another email from a famous person. My excitement overwhelmed my caution because this one was from Oprah. “I’m happy to confirm that your book has been officially greenlit for our upcoming Oprah Daily cycle. We’ll be rolling it out to our full community of roughly 40,000 active members.” I was asked if I was willing and I immediately said, “Yes!”.  Next came this offer: “To complement the rollout, we’d love to arrange a live component with you—typically a 30-minute member Q&A, though a recorded interview works just as well if that’s more convenient.”

As soon as I replied, “Yes!” I got the request for money. Scam alert! Oprah never requests money for her book club. Just ask Google. So I didn’t respond and I never heard from this scammer again.   

Now I’m determined to emulate this Marketing Pro follower who said, “I’ve not been scammed, though someone tries to scam me just about every other day… I was born a profound skeptic, so I’m almost impossible to fool, but still there’s a cardinal rule in this racket: No one who spontaneously approaches you about your writing has any good intentions, simply no one.”  

We should all be skeptical, not just writers. Scammers are getting increasingly sophisticated with AI. Save yourself and don’t get sucked in!

 

Photo by Steve A Johnson on Unsplash

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