The author of Daggermouth uses an AI-generated bio

And AI-generated summaries too

Amazon bio

Yesterday, I discovered that H. M. Wolfe uses an AI-generated text as her bio on Amazon, Goodreads and her personal website. Gemini suggested I’d check it out, since AI authors often use AI biographies as well. So I did. I read the whole thing, from beginning to end, even though the few words my eyes had already picked up on were enough for me to tell it was AI. After reading the bio in its entirety, I was certain. It has that unmistakable AI style to it, something you may only see if you have had much exposure to AI texts, but as for me, I’ve read far too many AI texts to not recognize it for what it was.

In addition, the second paragraph — the one in the middle — is incredibly vague. That’s very typical of AI. There are words on the page, sure, but they don’t mean anything concrete. So you end up better having read nothing.

I scanned the Amazon bio with Pangram. It came back as 100% AI-generated, with high confidence. Then I scanned it with GPTZero. Again, 100% AI-generated. I’m glad GPTZero breaks down the chance it was fully AI-generated, fully human-authored or a mix of AI and human text, for it was very satisfying to see that GPTZero was 100% certain. Is this absolute certainty perhaps a sign ChatGPT was the culprit?

The GPTZero score for the Amazon bio: 100% AI-generated

The Pangram score for the Amazon bio: 100% AI-generated

The plot thickens

H. M. Wolfe is full of surprises or rather my research is. It had only been a day since I discovered the Amazon bio of H. M. Wolfe was fully AI-generated, when I stumbled on her website via her Goodreads profile. www.hmwolfe.com. Here I found not only her Amazon bio again, but also a more primitive bio beneath it called “My story”. I had finished reading it and I almost instantly knew this was the source of the Amazon bio. Let’s compare.

Amazon bio:

H. M. Wolfe writes with her heart wide open, chasing the thrill of chaos and the sting of heartbreak on every page. Based in Central Florida, she shares her days with her husband and three loyal dogs — her writing partners and adventure crew through every twist of her literary journey.

Wolfe crafts stories where romance tangles with fantasy and unforgettable characters drive the action, inviting readers to disappear into worlds brimming with magic and meaning. She’s fiercely passionate about mental health advocacy and the messy, powerful work of self-discovery, believing deeply that everyone deserves to see themselves represented in the stories they love.

As you turn the final page of her books, Wolfe hopes you’ll find a new kind of strength — ready to take on the world and own your story like the warrior she knows you are.

My story:

All my life I have written stories.

Whether it’s in the form of music, shorts, novels or poetry, I have used writing as a way to express the things I never felt I could say. I have novel after unfinished novel tucked away in the corners of notebooks and hard drives that will never see the light of day.

But then, my sister reintroduced me to fantasy novels and something clicked. I was finally able to put my story onto the page in a way that I felt would do it justice.

My heart and soul are in the characters I write. They hurt, they grow and they heal with me. My books are character focused and have underlying themes of mental health awareness and inclusivity.

My only hope is, when you close my books after that last word, you felt a little magic.

“My story” reads like a primitive version of the Amazon bio. “My heart and soul are in the characters I write.” also shows up in the Amazon bio in the form of “H. M. Wolfe writes with her heart wide open”. Both versions mention the focus on mental health. And both versions end on a similar note.

My story ends with:

My only hope is, when you close my books after that last word, you felt a little magic.

The Amazon bio ends with:

As you turn the final page of her books, Wolfe hopes you’ll find a new kind of strength — ready to take on the world and own your story like the warrior she knows you are.

So what’s the deal with the two bios on Wolfe’s about page on her website? “My story” is very vague and full of clichés, as you would expect from AI. Nonetheless, my intuition told me the sentences were human. Thus I ran the “My story” through Pangram and GPTZero.me. Both were highly confident it was a human text. In fact, GPTZero was 100% certain this text was human-authored. I’m glad my intuition did not leave me in the cold.

The Pangram score for “My story”: 100% human

The GPTZero score for “My story”: 100% human

There are however three striking differences between My story and the Amazon bio. The Amazon bio also mentions three dogs, a husband and her place of residence (Central Florida). So how can My story be the source of the AI bio? And yet, I still think Wolfe asked ChatGPT — or a different chatbot — to polish her very rough version of a bio and that the Amazon bio was the result of this request. The chatbot she used could have stillen gotten the additional information from elsewhere: perhaps she had already mentioned them in the chat, perhaps ChatGPT asked for more detail so he could better help her, perhaps the information about the three dogs and partner came from the custom settings. You can personalize ChatGPT in the settings. Not only can you give him custom instructions which he’ll operate under, but you can also tell a little about yourself in the “About me” tab in the personalization settings. ChatGPT will remember these facts about you in every chat. It is possible that H. M. Wolfe had filled in the About me tab in the customization settings and that ChatGPT used that information when polishing her bio.

I can also explain why the human bio (My story) sounds so generic, so dispassionate as someone who has to write a motivational email for a job they only seek out for the money. Chances are, since Wolfe did not write Daggermouth herself, she hasn’t ever written a book without major help from artificial intelligence. And if that is the case, then she is not a real author. Then it only makes sense she couldn’t do better than to write a bio full of clichés and generic statements. She did not write about herself, not truly. She wrote along the lines of what she thought a writer does or would say.

Thus the Amazon and Goodreads bio of Mrs. Wolfe was AI-polished. But let’s take a moment for a second to think about what this means. The original, human bio was so clumsily written, it makes you wonder whether Mrs. Wolfe has any literary skills at all. If she cannot even write a decent bio for herself, how can we expect her to have written her books herself? Her inability to write a bio by herself is a complete embarrassment.

Amazon summaries

It was only yesterday that I found out that all of the official summaries of Wolfe’s books are AI-generated. The summary of The Book of Cin already came across to me as AI-generated before I even checked because of the excessive use of em dashes and because it felt more like a dry summation of events than an invitation to read this book. I plucked this summary into Pangram and it came back as 100% AI-generated, as I expected.

Since I had already scanned the official summary of Daggermouth two weeks before this, I knew that summary was AI-generated as well. When reading it, it was like reading dozens of book summaries all at once. It was that generic. So I wasn’t suprised either when Pangram said it was 100% AI-generated two weeks ago. So after I found out that the Amazon summary for The Book of Cin had been fully written by a machine, I really wanted to know whether or not the summary of Blood Rains Down would be flagged by Pangram as well. It was. And that was to my satisfaction, for now I had plenty of material for a stand-alone article about H.M. Wolfe using a little help from ChatGPT (or whichever chatbot she uses) to make the summaries for her books. If the summaries are AI-generated, then it really makes you wonder. If Wolfe is not even willing to write a text of about 200–300 words to summarize her book and attract readers, then why would I believe she wasn’t perfectly fine with using the output of a LLM in her books?

Well, as it turns out, my discoveries of that day were not over yet. I told Gemini about my findings. He suggested at the end of his reaction that I’d check out her bio. Often they are also neatly polished by a chatbot, Gemini explained, and full of vague mentions of hobbys and a general story about the “passion for storytelling”. That wasn’t a bad idea. I looked up the bio of H. M. Wolfe on Amazon.com and my eye ball picked up on a few words in the text and I already knew: it was AI-generated. But for my analysis of her bio, look up! Though I originally planned to make this article about the subject of the Amazon summaries only, I had to turn it into a dual article after I realized even the bio of H. M. Wolfe was fake.

Pangram has a medium confidence that the Amazon summary of The Book of Cin was 100% AI-generated.

Pangram has a high degree of confidence that the Amazon summary of Blood Rains Down was 100% AI-generated.

Pangram has a high degree of confidence that the Amazon summary of Daggermouth was 100% AI-generated.

Three in a row. How unlucky! Since Pangram is a conservative AI detector in order to minimize false positives, it is extremely unlikely none of these summaries are AI-generated.

We can take a look at the summary of The Book of Cin specifically to see that Pangram is correct. Literary analysis supports Pangram’s reading.

Summary of The Book of Cin, taken from its Amazon page:

IF YOU BELIEVE IN THE GODS, PRAY NOW. THEIR PROTECTION ENDS HERE.

At Asrai’s Academy for Orphans, Hyacinth stands at a crossroads. Torn between the safety of the only home she has ever known and leaving it all behind for a chance at a new life — for freedom. But when a mysterious messenger appears, whispering rumors of a God among Fae, everything Hyacinth thought she knew about the Realms comes crashing down.

Thrust into a deadly game of power and greed, Hyacinth discovers dormant magic within her that may hold the key to survival — or mark her for death. With her friends beside her, Hyacinth must navigate through murderous realms of vicious creatures, lethal betrayals and prophecies of old.

Secrets unravel, bonds are tested, and romance decays and blossoms amidst the looming promise of war. As alliances shift and enemies close in, her only hope lies in reaching the fabled safe haven of Locdragoon — but reaching it may cost her everything she loves.

“The Book of Cin” is a high fantasy tale of love, loss, and the enduring power of friendship. Embark on an epic adventure where courage meets destiny — and magic, sacrifice, and hope are the threads that bind us.

Look at all these em dashes. I counted four in this small text. As you may well know, chatbots overuse em dashes. Here, at least three of the four em dashes are totally unnecessary. I would only keep the fourth em dash for readability. And take a look at this sentence. “As alliances shift and enemies close in, her only hope lies in reaching the fabled safe haven of Locdragoon — but reaching it may cost her everything she loves.” Seriously? An em dash before the word but? Normally a construction with the word but is made via a comma. So I would write it like this, if I changed nothing but the interpunction: “As alliances shift and enemies close in, her only hope lies in reaching the fabled safe haven of Locdragoon, but reaching it may cost her everything she loves.”

Furthermore, we have the obligatory reference to the book’s title in the summary. Did H. M. Wolfe feel like she had to stick closely to a standard structure, even though referencing the title in the summary is by no means necessary because the title is already on the book page? To me, the ending very much seems like the typical way for an AI to end a text. All the scenes it wrote for me, for my AI-assisted Star Wars fanfiction, just had to end on a dramatic note or with a summary of what came before. In this case, the chatbot chose to summarize the story at the end.

This may be a little subjective, but I personally find this text to be quite a boring summary of The Book of Cin. A LLM can summarize, but it does not understand how it can make a plot marketable via a summary. It does not know how to make a plot description sound interesting. A human author on the other hand, probably would, especially one who is good or decent at writing books. Making your plot interesting is a challenge that a human author constantly has to deal with when writing their book. With all of that practice, could they not write a blurb? A summary for Amazon to attract readers? Therefore, the boring nature of this summary is a sign on its own.

Pangram has a new feature called Supporting Evidence. I always have it turned on. Pangram found eight instances of supporting evidence for this text. While Pangram claims to not use the supporting evidence for their determinations, they are useful for literary analysts. The last paragraph of the summary, in particular, shows a lot of additional signs. According to Pangram, the phrase “enduring power” is 200x times more likely to show up in AI-generated text. The final paragraph, short as it is, uses the Rule of Three twice or what Pangram calls “triads”.

The Pangram score with supporting evidence

(Originally posted on Substack.com. I am more active on Substack and converse regularly with people about subjects related to artificial intelligence on there. So if you want to get into contact, you can find me on: https://thehumanaidetector.substack.com/)