Marquise > Status Update

It honestly wouldn't surprise me if some do use it.

TL *Humaning the Best She Can* wrote: "It honestly wouldn't surprise me if some do use it."

There are AI tools you can upload a book on to, and it will give you a summary of its contents. That's what schoolkids are using (and college students too, everyone too lazy to read by themselves, really, as per my friend).

So... are there reviewers doing this too? Some already do sound as if they haven't read the book for how generic and fluffy their reviews are (which can be due to a million reasons, of course, but you have to wonder).

I know people who don’t write an email without AI, so I’m guessing it has to be happening with writing reviews. It seems insane to have it read it for them too (what’s the point?) but I’m not sure anything with AI usage can shock me anymore! 😅

unfortunately, there are. there are even reviewers or “bookfluencers”who use AI to write their substack posts. not to mention those AI applications that are generating fanfiction/scenarios for pre-existing books. i would be so distraught if my work was uploaded into a program to be used for these purposes

I can assure you that my reviews are not AI. Mine wouldn’t get so rambly and off topic if they were🤣.
I do use the read aloud option sometimes when it’s available. But that isn’t due to laziness, it’s due to severe fatigue and challenges with reading and chronic pain in multiple areas (so even holding a book or my phone can be painful🙄) due to various medical conditions. So in that way I use AI to help me read sometimes. I honestly appreciate the read aloud feature so much some times. I wish it was available on my Libby app too. And that print books had a little button I could press😂 when my body isn’t cooperating because it gets really frustrating when I want to continue reading a book so badly, but something is making it not possible.
It’s too bad if people use it to write their reviews (or use it for a summary of a book instead of reading the book in it’s entirety or saying they did not finish it because of whatever reason etc so they can write a review for it). I’d like to think that people don’t, but who knows. More of my reviews might make sense if I did!

AI might have shortened up my response!! 🤪. That got longer than I meant it to be.

What I find disturbing is that teachers also use AI to grade their students papers/assignments or to put together a curriculum as well. That's lazy to me... I also know that some "Authors" use AI to write books now and you can definitely tell the difference when reading them. So it wouldn't surprise me if folks use AI to write their reviews as well.

Of course they are. And, in the world of hypocrisy, a college philosopher prof friend of mine used AI to generate a top-10 list of existential questions for philosophical naturalists, but doesn't like it when his students use it on papers.

Definitely I do. I'm terrified it will become commonplace.

O_O the horror! the horror!

100%. This is probably going to be more info than you want to know....but I work in the AI space. The current version of ChatGPT has its training data updated through August 2025. If the book exists somewhere online, it could have already consumed it and therefore pop out a quick summary/review based on whatever prompt style the user wants to give. Now if the book is newer - it could get a synopsis from Grok who is tied into X and could read posts by other people. However - it would be harder to have general LLMs read an entire book right now - even if they uploaded into an LLM it would max out its context window. TLDR: write reviews - yes, Read books - trickier unless the book is older.

Seems likely at this point. I've even seen some reviewers mention it openly, which I guess is better than doing it on the sly. Still, I don't understand the point of writing reviews on this site (or writing at all) if you're not working through your own thoughts and trying to improve your own writing. My students definitely use it whenever I let them write things at home, and I can tell because the typical grammatical errors magically disappear. Very stilted, generic language seems to be another tell.

Unfortunately I think it happens way too often.

Sigh, god I hope not. Using AI to write a review of a book you’ve read (assuming these folks have read the book) seems completely antithetical to the world of books and reading. I am so tired of AI; I guess I was hoping that most everyone else is as well.

Absolutely.

Yes, and some of them get an absurd number of likes for reviews that are very obviously AI slob. GR members need to read reviews critically.

Absolutely

AI is pretty obvious, but rationalizations for using it are legion. As for your question, I think posts on any site for any purpose could be done (poorly) by AI. If there's one thing AI lacks, it's personality. Oh. And intelligence. Wait. And emotion. Did I mention character? OK, let's let voice through the door, too. Et and cetera.

It's not just reviews -- even genre books are being ChatGPT generated now. But I've seen a number of reviews here that are awkward and terrible enough to be AI generated. I'll post the next one I see here.

Oh -- and a lot of the Amazon book descriptions have cleary never seen a keyboard!

Yes, without doubt.

I have turned off AI on every device I have and avoid anything that smacks of it, for what good it does. The increasing prevalence of Artificial Intelligence is in direct proportion to the lack of Actual Intelligence.

Fred wrote: "The increasing prevalence of Artificial Intelligence is in direct proportion to the lack of Actual Intelligence."

Are you saying it's replacing Natural Stupidity? 😅

Left Coast Justin wrote: "Oh -- and a lot of the Amazon book descriptions have cleary never seen a keyboard!"

Good thing I don't pay attention to Amazon blurbs, and I'm a Blurb Girl the way other readers are Cover Girls/Guys.

Left Coast Justin wrote: "It's not just reviews -- even genre books are being ChatGPT generated now. But I've seen a number of reviews here that are awkward and terrible enough to be AI generated. I'll post the next one I s..."

Do we have actual proof that they're written by AI as opposed to guesses (educated or not) and rumours? I've never looked into that, but this convo with my teacher friend has me curious now.

How do you differentiate between terrible because AI and terrible because, say, maybe the reader isn't a native English speaker?

Mai wrote: "Absolutely"

Do you have a method for detecting them on your own without tools?

Meike wrote: "Yes, and some of them get an absurd number of likes for reviews that are very obviously AI slob. GR members need to read reviews critically."

You know, there's some popular reviewers I've suspected of not reading the book they review, and this phoning in their reviews, but until this chat with my friend I hadn't considered AI.

How do you know? No need to name names, just asking if there's a personal way you have to spotting them?

Ken wrote: "AI is pretty obvious, but rationalizations for using it are legion..."

I'm showing very starkly just how out of the loop I am, because when my friend asked me if I could detect AI on sight and I said no, he was surprised and more or less scolded me. How come an observant lass like me NOT detect AI on sight? 😅

I had to explain that it's unfamiliarity. I do not use AI, my interactions with it have been sorta forced on me by Google and Twitter, and it's been so few times that I've simply not developed an eye for it. My friend (and by the looks of it, y'all on this thread) obviously had more interactions and are more familiar with AI ways and quirks, thus can spot it easy enough.

Brynhild wrote: "Absolutely."

How do you detect it?

It wouldn't be surprising anymore sadly....

Alli wrote: "Sigh, god I hope not. Using AI to write a review of a book you’ve read (assuming these folks have read the book) seems completely antithetical to the world of books and reading."

Yeah, that's the exact thing one would think. Reading for pleasure isn't compulsory like school/university reading, so what would the need for AI be? It doesn't make sense.

But then . . . you think and you realise there are reviewers that care more about 'likes' and 'clicks' and generating buzz. Reading a book and writing/elaborating a review takes time, and they'd want something easy to save them the effort.

Charlton wrote: "Unfortunately I think it happens way too often."

But do you see it happening often or just think it happens often?

Mike wrote: "Seems likely at this point. I've even seen some reviewers mention it openly, which I guess is better than doing it on the sly."

Yeah, points for honesty and transparency at least. I can accept that.

Hahaha, your comment on your student's "grammer" magically disappearing made me laugh out loud, because that's EXACTLY what my teacher friend said. As an example, he mentioned a student who's not a native English speaker and always had hilarious spellings my friend was indulging towards on account of non-native. Then one day, those funny spellings just . . . poof, were gone. 😅

Teachers, man! They have the same trials & tribulations all over the world. 😅

Breezy wrote: "TLDR: write reviews - yes, Read books - trickier unless the book is older."

Great information, Breezy! Thank you for the insider info.

So, basically, these reviewers are using AI to write reviews through prompts, but can't make AI read the book for them yet? Mmmm... interesting, that would explain the cases where it's obvious they haven't read the book or have skim-read/portion-read it, regardless of whether they've used AI for the review or not.

Without a doubt. AI usage/bots are running rampant unfettered in almost every facet of our lives.

I've seen people use AI tools to edit their photos, make shopping lists, generate profile pics, write reviews on Sephora/amazon, writing their emails at work, making deepfakes, etc.

There are plenty of fake authors self-publishing garbage to make money.

I'm beyond cynical with everyone poisoning our water supply and propping up stolen data just because they're lazy. It's exhausting as a software engineer.

P.E. wrote: "O_O the horror! the horror!

"

Very unsound methods! The unsoundest!

Meredith wrote: "Definitely I do. I'm terrified it will become commonplace."

In schools and universities, it's already too late: it's too common. In reviewing? I can't say how common, but everyone commenting here is saying it does exist...

elizabeth wrote: "I know people who don’t write an email without AI, so I’m guessing it has to be happening with writing reviews..."

Oh, for goodness sake, not emails too! o.O

The point of having AI read the book for you is to save them time and thus pump out more 'reviews'. Not every reader is a dedicated reviewer and not every reviewer is a dedicated reader. That would be the logic, if I were in their shoes, but who knows?

X wrote: "unfortunately, there are. there are even reviewers or “bookfluencers”who use AI to write their substack posts..."

The 'bookfluencers' are precisely the crowd I had in mind when I asked this question. If someone would do this on the regular, it would be them.

Some of them (and some non-bookfluencers) already wrote reviews that sounded like they haven't read the book, before AI was this prevalent, so imagine how it must be now. And I don't mean the "sounds like you've not read" in the disagreement sense, but that they genuinely didn't read or skim-read the book.

Marta wrote: "AI might have shortened up my response!! 🤪. That got longer than I meant it to be."

Hahaha, thank you for the detailed reply.

I wasn't even counting the read-aloud or text-to-speech AI functions at all. I consider them necessities, not cheat tricks. I have a blind relative that reads books that aren't in audiobook this way, and I also know low-vision folks that use it. So I wouldn't include this function.

But healthy, perfectly capable folks loading books to AI or using AI to write reviews/book reports for school? Then yes, that's a cheat. They could do the reading themselves, after all.

~*~Princess Nya Vasiliev~*~ wrote: "What I find disturbing is that teachers also use AI to grade their students papers/assignments or to put together a curriculum as well...."

Yeah, it goes both ways. Schoolteachers, though? I haven't heard of any, I'd have to ask my friend if he knows his colleagues use AI for that. College/Uni professors? Oh yes, I know they do.

Marquise wrote: "Breezy wrote: "TLDR: write reviews - yes, Read books - trickier unless the book is older."

Great information, Breezy! Thank you for the insider info.."

Yes this is exactly what happens! For example - if a book was released last month and someone asked an LLM "give me a plot summary and unique review of XYZ book" - the AI would 100% make shit up (called AI Hallucinations). If you see reviews that make 0 sense - this is why. These book reviewers probably don't even realize what is happening (since they didn't read the book to begin with).

Now some AI like Grok have live integration with X - so they could go through and ask Grok what people have been saying about the book on X and then synthesize other reviews into their own review. I bet in most cases with newer books - this is what is happening. Or the author who is paying to have the book reviewed and promoted writes up a summary and gives to the reader to "review" and they use AI to make it "unique".

As far as actually analyzing the book - in theory they could download the PDF and upload to an LLM. But typically, a 600pg novel is around 300K tokens which is more than most can handle. It wouldn't be able to analyze it - or if it did - it would be crap and forget half the book.

If you want to check if a review is AI generated, you can use a website called gptzero - just drop in the text to analyze :)

Socraticgadfly wrote: "Of course they are. And, in the world of hypocrisy, a college philosopher prof friend of mine used AI to generate a top-10 list of existential questions for philosophical naturalists, but doesn't like it when ..."

That tracks, Uni professors are always the worst in the matter of ethics, in my experience.

Cindy wrote: "It wouldn't be surprising anymore sadly...."

For us old-timers who have seen everything on this site? Yeah...

Scott wrote: "Of course… but to what end? To help their favorite authors build a tremendous volume of reviews and boost their image and standing? Ooops. Just answered my own question …."

Yeah, you did. Utilitarianism and clicks/likes chasing and to keep their review output volume.

I do wonder how some of those folks have time for life stuff, with the consistent volume of reviews they pump out.

Mary ♥ wrote: "I'm beyond cynical with everyone poisoning our water supply and propping up stolen data just because they're lazy. It's exhausting as a software enginee..."

I sympathise. <3 I've witnessed the same you have, everything is up for grabs online.

Breezy wrote: "Yes this is exactly what happens! For example - if a book was released last month and someone asked an LLM "give me a plot summary and unique review of XYZ book" - the AI would 100% make shit up (called AI Hallucinations). If you see reviews that make 0 sense - this is why. These book reviewers probably don't even realize what is happening (since they didn't read the book to begin with)"

OH, HOHOHO! Thank you SO much, Breezy! This is gold to me, The above paragraph just confirms how the Hell these reviewers are doing it, and I'm not the one hallucinating or thinking ill of people. I can usually tell when someone hasn't read the book or has skim-read/portion read it, but from there to saying whether it's an AI-generated review . . . there is where I've gotta learn.

I'mma bookmark that site for some fun hours uploading suspect reviews and LOLing at what is confirmed or debunked to be AI. Many thanks! 😅

Marquise wrote: " ~*~Princess Nya Vasiliev~*~ wrote: "What I find disturbing is that teachers also use AI to grade their students papers/assignments or to put together a curriculum as well...."

Yeah, it goes both ..."

My son's Sr. Econ teacher back in August, tried to fail my son on his first test in that class, because he used AI to grade the test and it said my son used AI for his answers.. Which he did not. I had to speak with the principal, and his counselor, after my son reached out to the teacher directly about his grade. It pissed me off because my son is a straight A student. On the National Honors Society since his Jr year and has the highest GPA in his class since his freshman year.. The fact that his Econ teacher could barely spell and used poor grammar in his reply email back to my son, while also admitting he used AI to grade the test, said it all.. Him trying to accuse my son of cheating because he's too lazy to grade a damn test himself, was beyond an insult..

We got it straightened out after I had to raise a little hell about it.. But the principal also admitted that their teachers are using AI, alongside other tools to grade assignments. Which is clearly problematic if that's the ONLY tool they're using to grade class work.
Which is what that Econ teacher did initially.. This incident proved that AI is not full proof/accurate when it comes to grading school work. And that these teachers/schools are becoming just as lazy and ignorant as some of their students, these authors, and AI reviewers..

Marquise wrote: "I'mma bookmark that site for some fun hours uploading suspect reviews ..."

I'm glad I could help! Have fun!

Marquise wrote: " ~*~Princess Nya Vasiliev~*~ wrote: "What I find disturbing is that teachers also use AI to grade their students papers/assignments or to put together a curriculum as well...."

Yeah, it goes both ..."

I can say from decades of experience that many college professors are extremely lazy.

Here? For sure. In fact, I think we'd be alarmed to learn all the places where AI is used to produce content that readers have a reasonable expectation to assume is a human point of view.