A new chatbot called ChatTJB has been making waves in San Francisco after advertising itself as the “leading chat interface powered by AI” — only for curious users to discover that the supposed artificial intelligence is actually just one man named Tucker Bryant.
In ChatTJB‘s world, “AI” stands for “average individual.”
Bryant, an artist, Stanford grad and former Google employee, personally reads and responds to every question submitted through the chatbot-style website — essentially turning himself into a one-man version of ChatGPT.
The tongue-in-cheek project is advertised on a $6,000 San Francisco billboard that went up in late July, and was launched as a commentary on society’s increasingly automatic reliance on artificial intelligence.
“Since then, I have been speaking to an average of about 1,000 people a day about what to eat for dinner, what color to paint their homes, and everything else that’s been on their minds,” Bryant said on Instagram.
The goal was to recreate the sleek look of a chatbot but deliver “a really average or bad experience,” instead, so that the next time a chatbot spits out an answer, users might think twice before swallowing it whole, Bryant told Futurism.
Once photos of the billboard went viral, Bryant said requests exploded from a few dozen to thousands, at one point reportedly receiving some 5,000 per hour. To date, ChatTJB has reportedly gotten more than 30,000 questions.
“I was answering all of those,” he told Futurism.
It works likes this, according to the website: “In practice: you ask a question, and a person named Tucker reads it, thinks about it, and writes back when awake and motivated. Everything below is a more verbose way of saying that.”
The one-man operation has gotten so much attention that Bryant is now asking other “average individuals” if they would be willing to help out as he hopes to turn ChatTJB into a “community project.” He plans to introduce volunteers slowly and has added an onboarding quiz, message triaging, crisis response resources and other safeguards.
“Now when you send prompts you’ll be talking to an approved AI (Average Individual) from the broader community rather than me,” ChatTJB states.
But be warned: most queries won’t get responses for “a loooong time.”
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