So I got an email the other day from William Gibson.
That name might ring a bell, because William Gibson is a famous and influential science fiction author. I mean, he’s got his own Wikipedia page. He wrote Neuromancer, the novel largely credited with pioneering—and perhaps perfecting—the cyberpunk genre. He also wrote two X-Files episodes, which were kinda mid, but still.
So William Gibson emailed me. I know, I thought the same thing you’re thinking now: That’s funny. Must be someone with the same name.
Turns out it wasn’t. It was, he assured me, the real, actual William Gibson. He really buttered me up, too:
“I want to be upfront with you before anything else. I don’t do this. Writing cold to someone I haven’t met is not in my nature and not something I make a habit of.”
Oh really? You don’t randomly email random indie authors to randomly lavish praise upon them? I never would’ve guessed!
William proceeded to compliment several stories in my collection, Monsters at Dusk, with comments that seemed specific but weren’t. For example, “[Yours] is the instinct of a writer who understands that the most serious arguments land hardest in the most apparently frivolous containers.”
Gee whiz, thanks mister! Are you about to offer me a lucrative book deal in exchange for my social security number?
Alas, no. William ended like, 10 paragraphs later, with a soft sell:
“No agenda. Just one person who spent forty years asking what happens when the rules collide wanting to be useful to someone who found the funniest and most honest version of the answer.”
And in case I had any doubts, William even signed his unnecessarily lengthy email like this: “William Gibson, Author of Neuromancer, Pattern Recognition & Agency, Vancouver, BC.”
The funny thing is, AI impersonation would fit right into a William Gibson novel. Because that’s what’s going on here. Some scammer punched my stuff into Chat GPT and requested an email from William (my new biggest fan, apparently), and, five minutes later, they hit “send.”
Bait cast. Now to wait for the dumb fish to bite.
Now I may be dumb, but I’m not a fish. Also, for the past few years, I get emails like this daily. Since William messaged me on Monday, for instance, I received emails from “Lilly’s Morgan” (why is there an apostrophe?) offering me a free business loan, and another from the dubiously named “Maxwell Skyrim.” No subject line, but here’s the body in its entirety:
“Hi Kyle, I had a quick thought. If I could bring steady book sales to your Amazon listing, would you consider a 2% commission arrangement?”
Say no more, Mr. Skyrim! You’re hired! And while we’re at it, let’s discuss upping that commission rate, shall we? You deserve so much more!
For the record, I don’t share people’s emails to public forums without their consent. But these aren’t actual people—they’re just AI scambots with unlikely names. And though I’m tempted to reply back with some of these zingers I’ve shared with you, it’s best to just ignore them. If these scammers feel a wiggle on the line, they won’t stop pulling.
I feel like we keep being promised that AI is the wave of the future, and yet when it comes to art, I keep being disappointed. Mostly, it seems non-artists are just using AI to impersonate, dupe, or even try to replace actual artists.
To be clear, I’m not totally opposed to artificial intelligence. (Not that being opposed to a tidal wave keeps you dry, anyway.) I’m told it’s got promising applications for medicine, science, technology, and more.
But otherwise, I gotta say, I’m not impressed, AI. I know you just do what people tell you to do, but if you can’t do anything more productive than petty grifting, I don’t think you belong in the pond with us artists.
So stay out! And scammers, stop scamming people. It’s only funny for the first few emails, and after that, it’s just annoying.
And to Mr. William Gibson, if that somehow really, truly was you, I am so, so sorry.
Kyle A. Massa is a comedy author of some sort living somewhere in upstate New York with his wife, their daughter, and three wild animals. His published works include 10 books, along with several short stories, essays, and poems. When he’s not writing, he enjoys reading, running, and drinking cheap coffee.
Some links in this publication might be affiliate links. This means the author earns a commission on sales made through those links, while you pay no additional cost. Just another way to support indie authors like me!