ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - A private drone company is ignoring St. Louis's cease and desist order and pleas from residents, even flouting local laws around flying drones in city parks.
Monday, this company could be watching your neighborhood. Its name is SMS Novel Films and it describes the journey the company has taken as it inconsistently morphs from one business venture to the next. The company has made bold claims. Such as that its owner Jomo Johnson used Chat GPT to write and publish thousands of books.
"Using Chat GPT to create not just a book, but an entire 12,000 book library," Johnson claimed in a video which can be found on an old version of the company's website.
Suspiciously, the company boasts in a hidden page on it's current site to have produced the exact same number of narrated interactive films. Over 12,000. The website does show a few short minute long videos featuring AI voice overs.
However, there is no evidence 12,000 published books or 12,000 films even exist.
The old website has libraries listed in the order of numbers three, two, and five but they only show a list of book titles. Nearly all book titles following the same cadence, a quote followed by a description, indicating the list itself was likely generated by Chat GPT.
What does not exist is links to purchase or even see covers for almost all of these alleged books, casting doubt on the books existence. Only 84 books exist on this website, some listed for sale as much as $100.
As the company began to shift its focus from books to films, the services they offer became more suspicious. On one page they claim they could teach you how to pitch ideas to Netflix.
KMOX connected with an employee to book a session with. While they asked to not be recorded, she said she has never pitched anything to Netflix and was only a remote freelance writer for SMS Novel for a brief time.
One of the sketchier services found on the website was a page calling for dogs to audition for a film about Jesus.
However, clicking the link, it takes you to SMS Novel's current page where you have to pay $200 for your dog to audition for their movie. There is no evidence this film was ever produced or exists.
Perhaps the most bizarre page found on the old website, is a video where the company proclaims itself as a "Cult."
A ten minute long video which can be found on the defunct version of SMS Novel's website where they call themselves as "a writing cult like no other."
The video uses a A.I. voiceover and mixes stock footage with amateur footage to tells a tale of SMS Novel being a cult their founder Jomo Johnson leads.
"Their leader Jomo K. Johnson pulled me to the side and told me he had something to say to the camera," the AI voiceover claims."[Johnson] spoke of his vision for SMS Novel of the power of the written word to change the world and of the role AI would play in the changing literature in the future."
They go on to describe themselves as a rat king of writers, joined at the tails by the power of artificial intelligence. Other odd quotes written in the video include "Let us write for you... lest we die."
While the authenticity of the story the video describes is questionable, the tale it tells is bizarre. Describing an instance where SMS Novel employees form a circle, look up and raise their arms to draw inspiration from the sun and "connect with the divine."
The video was found on a page describing a "writing monastery," Johnson is starting in April. The rules for this monastery:
1: You must remain on their zoom call for a minimum one hour.
2: Please have your camera turned on
3: Please be prepared to write a minimum of 1,500 words while on the call.
The writing monastery page does not say what you will be writing or if the writing will even be for your own work, or if it will be free labor for SMS Novel. Only a link to a zoom call.
The bizarre cult video ends with stealing the end credits from the 1997 Warner Brothers movie, "Contact."
Is this company legitimate? Trustworthy?
Chris Thetford with the Better Business Bureau says if you think you see red flags with a business, the best thing to do is research the company.
"[The] internet is a good place to [research]," says Thetford. "A good tip is to google the name of the business and put 'BBB' with it for Better Business Bureau. Go there and we'll tell you everything that other consumers have told us about the business."
KMOX has been unable to find any LLCs listed under the name SMS Novel and has only been able to link its owner Jomo Johnson to a Pennsylvania not for profit group under his name. He has previously started multiple churches.
KMOX has attempted to contact SMS Novel's founder Jomo Johnson for a story but he has told us he will not speak to the media until after his company's drones flights over St. Louis for surveillance Monday.