A new Silicon Valley-based AI chatbot has been forced to halt operations after it was revealed to be powered by one bloke who was desperately googling the answers to users' questions.
The unmasking of ChatTJB
ChatTJB, which describes itself as the 'leading chat interface powered by AI', was founded by former Google employee turned motivational speaker Tucker Bryant. On one billboard advertising the bot, the word AI has an asterisk next to it, leading to a small note explaining that the acronym in fact stands for 'Average Individual', as opposed to artificial intelligence.
It then became clear that the 'bot' was in fact just Tucker himself desperately typing out his own thoughts to people's prompts, which ranged from recipe requests for Italian sausages to apartment renovation advice.
Why it stopped
According to Tucker, the fake-AI rouse was designed to be a 'community project' that aimed to "reconnect us in a small way and lets the cultural omniscience of AI sit a little lighter, at a time that technology is doing both wonderful and weird things to us." However, as the bot grew in popularity, a "sleep-deprived" Tucker admits that he wasn't able to cope, and has had to pause operations on the website.
Via the ChatJBT website, Tucker wrote: "This thing got way more attention than I anticipated and it is no longer conceivable for me to keep up with prompts."
Future plans
However, for those who weren't able to access the unique chatbot at the time of its launch, Tucker says that he is hopeful he can restart the 'joke' site, using a team of volunteers to help him deal with requests. He said: "A ton of people have asked if they can get involved, so we're going to try ChatTJB out as a community project. chat is still closed but when it reopens and you send prompts you'll be talking to an approved AI (Average Individual) from the broader community rather than me.
"I created this page when this project was just me answering a thousand prompts a day, but people wanted to get involved. I'm gonna update this when i have a bit more time, but am leaving it here for anyone who's curious about how it started (which is as a joke)."
