AI spambots in my comments

October 2, 2025 Musings 5

Boowyrm's Hoard blog post header graphic: AI Spambots in my Comments. The background "photo" is an AI-generated image of a humanoid robot made of white plastic over metal parts. It sits at a white table and appears to be typing on a silver laptop. The robot's humanoid, somewhat masculine face is turned toward the viewer; it wears a pair of black earphones with a small microphone jutting from one earphone. The robot appears to be in an otherwise empty office or room with fluorescent lights in the recessed ceiling; the walls, floor, and ceiling are very out of focus.

The spambots in my comments are apparently using ChatGPT and similar LLMs now, and the results are scarily good and hilariously bad at the same time.

Here are a few of the AI spambot comments I got on my 9/28 Sunday Post. For context, in the post I talked about my dad’s failing health, my visit to Utah and New Mexico, fixing my Lamy Safari fountain pen, and of course the books I had read and the new books I had acquired.

The first one is scarily good; I could almost believe a human being wrote it, except that the same website tried to post several other comments that were less accurate. However, note the lack of necessary apostrophes, which I suppose is the result of generative AI being trained on the comments sections of innumerable blogs and social media sites (some of which have a culture of ignoring punctuation.) And the tone is overly enthusiastic.

Reading your Sunday Post is like tuning into a real-life reality show, but instead of drama, its filled with book hauls, charming family visits, and the satisfying click of a pen cleaning! Your emotional rollercoaster with your dad has more twists than a murder mystery, and Im betting your stepmoms patience is stronger than Fort Knoxs lock. The New Mexico trip sounds like the perfect escape, though I imagine your home turf is calling with the allure of your own bed and creative projects. And those games! Youre practically a digital Olympics athlete. Keep spreading the joy, and may your next book be as delightful as your updates! 

The next comment is hilariously bad; it was posted by/from the same website and name, but a different (fake) email address. Here, the chatbot was clearly having a harder time interpreting and responding to my post, since I didn’t sing in the choir in Utah, but in New Mexico, and I never mentioned Dad’s fountain pen because he doesn’t have one.

Sounds like your dads pen was having more than just a dry spell! Hope your Lamy Safari skips back into action. And while we all dream of being able to sing in a choir during our Utah visits, maybe focus on the joy of the new jacket instead? Seriously though, good luck with those tricky family dynamics – hope things smooth out soon, maybe like your pen did after that cleaning!

The previous week’s Sunday Post generated shorter comments. If Akismet hadn’t caught these, I think I would have suspected a spambot in both cases, but I might not have been certain about the second comment without checking the website address associated with the comment’s “author.” The first one has that TikTok or YouTube voiceover vibe that makes me immediately suspicious. The second one, though, is just specific enough to be convincing; the grammar, punctuation, and spelling are accurate and the tone is more thoughtful. Only the fact that it is basically flattery, with nothing personal about the commenter, makes me question it.

I love how the author balances serious family duties with a laugh-out-loud book haul! The stress of helping parents meets the joy of new reads like The Enchanted Greenhouse. Plus, who doesn’t want to play Wordle while watching Star Trek? A relatable mix of chaos and cozy vibes!

This post is so relatable and heartfelt. I admire how you balance helping your family with your own needs, and the book haul is always inspiring! Your updates bring a sense of connection and normalcy.

Finally, the comment below was in reply to my post about my Fall 2025 TBR list; the website and email associated with this one appear unrelated to the two above. What’s interesting is that the chatbot is handling the book titles the same way some people do when commenting online or when texting: by placing the title between a pair of asterisks. The tone and word choice of the comment reads more like a TikTok video or Instagram reel than like a fellow book blogger, though.

These covers are making me question my life choices. Why did I choose the couch over *A Dark and Secret Magic*? Probably because my TBR list is longer than my arm, which is currently holding a cup of coffee that’s probably older than some of these books. But hey, *Three Can Keep a Secret*? That title alone is enough to make me want to hide from my bills. And *Have you read any of these?* Yes, I’ve read the urge to add more books to my TBR list. Seriously, how does one even start with such a tempting list? It’s like trying to eat just one cookie from a jar labeled Eat Me All. I love the vibe though! Perfect for when the only thing better than fall is a good (and cover-worthy) book.

All I can say is, thank goodness for Akismet! It is absolutely worth the small yearly subscription. It caught and sequestered all the comments above and more, saving me the time and hassle of trying to figure out whether the commenters were legitimate or spammers. (No, this isn’t an ad for Akismet; I pay for my subscription, and they have never contacted me or asked me for an endorsement. I’m sure there are other effective plugins you could use to filter spam comments; Akismet just happens to be the one I use.)

But what both amazes and frightens me is how quickly the spambots have “learned” to mimic written human interaction. They aren’t perfect at it yet, but they’re getting eerily close. What happens when we can no longer tell the difference between a real human blogger/follower and an AI chatbot? The online book community has been a lifeline for me, since I don’t have a lot of local in-person friends that I can geek out about books with. Some of you are bloggers I have known, followed, and even become friends with over many years through our blogs, our back-and-forth comments, and (in some cases) the COYER community. I enjoy our interactions and treasure our book-inspired friendships. I don’t want to abandon this space and this community, but I’m worried it will become harder and harder to tell who is real and “who” is a construct. And I wonder whether we will start to see a backlash as people begin to disengage from online spaces or legislate against LLM chatbots, or whether people will become so engaged with the bots that they lose the ability or interest to interact with real human beings in real life.

About the post header graphic: I generally avoid using AI-generated images whenever possible, because the current AI image generators are all trained on stolen art (i.e., used without permission) made by human beings, and using them means the artists themselves aren’t getting paid. However, in this specific case, I thought it was appropriate to use an AI-generated “photo.”

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5 Responses to “AI spambots in my comments”

  3. Katherine

    Honestly I think AI is the worst thing we’ve ever done. At this point I’m seeing very big negatives and very little positive. Those comments are crazy! I need to go check my spam. I forget about it.

    Reply

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