Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

Carrie’s books | Carrie’s band

Category: Books

Stuff I’ve read or helped to write

  • Authors who don’t exist

    Meet Jason N. Martin N. Martin, the author of the exciting and dynamic Amazon bestseller “How to Talk to Anyone: Master Small Talks, Elevate Your Social Skills, Build Genuine Connections (Make Real Friends; Boost Confidence & Charisma)”

    Except you can’t meet him, because he doesn’t exist. He’s an AI-generated character with an AI-generated face credited with writing an AI-generated ebook with an AI-generated cover. Both the cover and the content are likely based on content that’s been plagiarised: most of the large language and content models used for AI generation have been fed with real humans’ work in order for them to emulate it without credit or, of course, payment.

    Once you’ve found Jason, Amazon will recommend another 11 just like him.

    Between the synthetic faces, the use of repetitive and potentially AI-generated text, and art copied from other sources, the 57 books that these authors have published over the last two years may well contain almost no original human-generated content, and Amazon’s algorithms in their current state have the unfortunate effect of worsening the problem by recommending additional inauthentic books or authors once a customer stumbles upon one of them.

    Amazon isn’t the only place this is happening, and books aren’t the only sector it’s happening in: there’s a flood of computer-generated content in everything from music to furniture listings. Just the other day Amazon’s listings were full of products called “I’m sorry but I cannot fulfill this request it goes against OpenAI use policy”. X/Twitter is already full of ChatGPT bots posting, and your search engine results are starting to fill up with AI-generated content too. I’ve been trying to research some products recently and it’s been like swimming through treacle: so much content returned by search engines is completely useless now.

    The odd listings are most likely the result of dropship sellers using ChatGPT to write everything from product descriptions to product names in huge volumes, but they’re a good example of the pernicious creep of AI into almost everything online – partly due to tech platforms’ lack of interest in removing useless content. Sometimes it’s funny – ChatGPT confidently informed me that I died a few years ago – but it’s increasingly replacing actual information in your search results. And then that bad information becomes the source data for the next generation of AI articles.

    That could mean AI is an ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail: the more AI-generated content there is, the more AI will use that content as its source – and that means the very many errors AI systems are currently making will cascade. AI researchers have a name for the potential outcome: model collapse. It means that the language models used by AI are so full of bad data that their results are useless at best and absolute gibberish at worst.

    There’s a famous saying in tech: garbage in, garbage out. Thanks to AI, we’re currently seeing that happen on an epic scale.

  • Handsome devils

    I bought myself a coffee table book as a present. Marr’s Guitars by Johnny Marr is a lavishly photographed guide to some of Marr’s 132 guitars, including some very iconic instruments that played a key role in the sound of The Smiths.

    If you love guitars like I do, it’s absolute filth.

    Some of my favourite bits are the many close-ups of cracked paint, worn metal and chipped edges, the signs of a guitar well used rather than kept behind glass somewhere. And I love the way many of these guitars move: bought or gifted from the guitarists who influenced Marr or the musicians he played with in his long and varied career, or passed on to other musicians by Marr – a list that includes the likes of Noel Gallagher of Oasis and Bernard Butler.

    If you’re looking for a guide to Marr’s sounds you won’t find much here, although a photo of his Smiths-era pedals does give some pretty big hints. It’s a book to sit back and luxuriate with, not one to crib from, and it does that job very well. If like me you’re the kind of person who ooohs at a sparkly stratocaster or a resplendent Rickenbacker, it’s a very beautiful book.

  • Calling Scots writers

    Are you an early-career queer writer based in Scotland? Then you really need to know about the Queer Words Project Scotland, which is now open for applications. It’s a programme designed to help you with your writing, and with your writing career.

    Funded by Creative Scotland, it matches five emerging queer writers with five established authors who’ll provide help and advice – and this year those authors are Colin Herd, Heather Parry, Mae Diansangu, Shola Von Reinhold and me.

    It’s a great opportunity, it’s going to be tons of fun and successful applicants’ work will be featured in an anthology by the wonderful 404 Ink. You’ve got until Valentine’s day to apply and full details are available right here.

  • Just the facts

    Since around 2017, it’s been very clear that if you hate trans people you can make up any old shite and have it printed or broadcast without anybody fact-checking it before, during or afterwards – and as a result, many anti-trans activists have taken full advantage of that to spread absolute bullshit with impunity. So it’s refreshing, albeit years overdue, to see some fact checking finally take place.

    Irish newspaper The Journal did some fact checking of a claim made by anti-trans obsessive Graham Linehan on Newstalk radio. According to Linehan, if you search the crowdfunding site JustGiving and look for people crowdfunding top surgery, there are “nearly 38,000 girls” raising money for surgery.

    The actual number of fundraisers is 38.

    What the Journal has done here is not difficult, but despite fact-checking being fundamental to good journalism it’s incredibly rare: there continues to be an assumption that contributors are coming in good faith, an assumption that is widely abused by endless bad actors. Their success should shame the journalists, editors, presenters and producers who’ve let them get away with it so publicly for so long.

  • “Who needs this?”

    There’s a lovely piece by the equally lovely Robin Ince about creating things and asking yourself a simple question: who needs this?

    It’s something I think about a lot, and like Robin says “my favourite thing about the arts is the potential of connection.” When I write a book or a song, what I want to do more than anything else is to connect with somebody.

    I’m very lucky in that I sometimes get to see those connections: sometimes I’ll play a song and see people react to it, or I’l do a book thing and get to talk to people afterwards. I’ve joked that the latter is very dangerous, because it can make you think you’re Bono. But to have someone tell you that your book (or any other thing you’ve created) has been meaningful to them is an astonishing, beautiful thing.

    Ince:

    What I love to see is arts and artists that are full of love, that enhance, that make people feel happier to be alive, that offer people new ways of thinking and being.

    The older I get the more I feel the same too. I’ve done the hack work, the low hanging fruit, the lazy gag and the easy laugh. But while there may be money in it there’s no skill in it, no fun in it and no love in it. As Robin puts it:

    I think there is more bravery in showing love than shouting hate.

  • Year we go

    I can barely believe it, but Carrie Kills A Man is a year old this week. That’s a year of going to amazing places, meeting amazing people and having amazing adventures, and I feel just as excited and delighted and pinching myself about it all as I did on publication day.

    Thanks to everybody who’s been part of making CKAM happen and helping it find new homes: my publishers, of course, but also the brilliant booksellers and book bloggers and book reviewers and bookstagrammers and booktokers who’ve helped spread the word, the podcasters, writers, producers and festival organisers that have very generously given me space to bump my gums and most of all, the people who’ve read the book.

    I feel incredibly lucky: it’s been a rough year personally but this has genuinely been the most fun year of my writing life so far.

     

  • Now that’s funny

    From Popbitch:

    The intensity of internet discourse can sometimes create an overinflated sense of just how interested the general public is in certain stories.

    For instance, Graham Linehan’s new memoir Tough Crowd: How I Made And Lost A Career In Comedy sold 390 copies in its first week – including pre-sales. A figure that fails to place it in the Top 1000.

    To put that into context, titles that did crack the Top Thou include: a large print wordsearch book in at No.551, which sold more than twice that; and a colouring book called Dinosaurs Around The World, which sold over 2,000.

    He’s currently claiming to have sold tens of thousands of copies, apparently unaware that “ordered by bookshops who thought serialisation in two national newspapers would mean a lot of sales” and “actually bought by people” are not the same thing. Books not sold are returned to the publisher after a set period.

    Hilarious hubris aside, the opening paragraph of the Popbitch piece is key here: that story, and the trouncing of the Tories in last night’s by-election, are yet more evidence that the anti-trans culture war is an obsession of a very small group of people: newspaper proprietors, right-wing politicians and obsessive internet trolls.

    Update: in fairness, it’s worth pointing out that the figures won’t include pre-sales sold directly via the publisher, which is where the author’s biggest fans will have been getting their copies from. But that just further proves the point that the general public just isn’t interested.

  • Temporarily inaudible

    If you’re looking for Carrie Kills A Man on Audible right now, you won’t find it. I’m tempted to pretend that it’s because I’ve been silenced and get myself a few weeks of national newspaper and broadcasting publicity, but I’m too honest to do that. It’s an admin thing and it’ll be back on the service in a couple of weeks.

  • Talking books

    Photo: Laura Jones-Rivera

    Thank you so much to Alex Hyde, Kirsty Logan, Szilvia Molnar and everybody who helped make our chat at the Edinburgh International Book Festival so much fun. This was my first time at the festival and if you haven’t been, I’d really recommend you go next year. It’s a huge event featuring lots of amazing people, but it doesn’t feel massive and there’s a really lovely atmosphere to it all.

  • Parent power

    I’ve been keeping this secret for ages until it felt like I’d burst, but now I can go public: I’m appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this year in stellar company. Kirsty Logan, Szilvia Monar and I will be talking about our memoirs and the minefield of modern parenting.

    The event is on at the Spark Theatre on Monday 28 August and tickets go on sale on 29 June.