#chatbots

[mostlysignssomeportents]

We bullied HP into a minor act of disenshittification

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me TORONTO TOMORROW (Feb 23) at Another Story Books, and in NYC on WEDNESDAY (26 Feb) with JOHN HODGMAN. More tour dates here.

Here in the darkest days of the enshittocene, enshittification is low quality and plentiful, but even in this target-rich environment, one company stands out as pioneering champions of enshittification: HP.

Every page in the enshittification playbook was printed in farcically expensive HP ink, and if you try to run a copy off for yourself, the printer will stop five times and force you to print a "calibration page" that is solid color from top to bottom, consuming about $10 worth of ink. Don't like it? Die mad.

HP drips with contempt for its customers. They make printer-scanners that won't scan unless all four ink cartridges are installed and haven't reached their best-before dates. They make printers that won't print black and white if your $50 magenta cartridge is low. They sell you printers with special half-full cartridges that need to be replaced pretty much as soon as the printer has run off its mandatory "calibration" pages. The full-serving ink you buy to replace those special demitasse cartridges is also booby-trapped – HP reports them as empty when they're still 20% full.

HP tricks customers into signing up for irrevocable subscriptions where you have to pay every month, whether or not you print, and if you exceed your subscription cap, the printer refuses to work, no matter how much ink is left. Now, about those HP ink subscriptions. When the company launched them, they offered a pot-sweetener meant to tempt in the wary: a one-price "lifetime subscription" that would let you print 15 pages every month, for so long as you owned the printer. But a couple years later, all those "free ink for life" customers got an email telling them that they were being migrated to a monthly payment plan, and if they didn't like it, they could eat shit and throw away their printers:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/06/horrible-products/#inkwars

HP pioneered the use of copyright law to prevent third parties from refilling ink cartridges or making their own compatible cartridges. Section 1201 of Bill Clinton's Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it a felony to distribute a "circumvention device" to bypass access controls on a copyrighted work. By designing its cartridges do undertake a little cryptographic handshake with the printer to verify their "authenticity," HP ensures that anyone who markets a bypass device to let you choose which ink you use in your own damn printer is a felon, liable to five years in prison and a $500 fine under DMCA 1201.

Of course, nature finds a way. Hardware hackers have come up with some insanely cool bypass devices for HP printer cartridges, like these paper-thin, flexible, adhesive-backed circuit boards that wrap around third party cartridges, intercepting communications between the printer and a salvaged HP security chip:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/30/life-finds-a-way/#ink-stained-wretches

But HP fights back, and they fight dirty. For example, they periodically push out "security updates" for their printers that break compatibility with third party cartridges. To prevent HP customers from discovering and blocking these fake security updates, HP designs them to lie dormant for months after installation, until everyone has clicked "OK," and then all those Manchurian Printers wake up and betray their owners by refusing to use their ink:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

All of this has allowed HP to monotonically raise – and raise – and raise – the price of printer ink to the point where it is now the most expensive fluid a civilian can purchase without a permit. Printer ink now runs over $10,000/gallon, meaning that you print out your grocery lists with colored water that costs more than the semen of a Kentucky Derby winner.

HP is truly the poster child for enshittification, and also, patient zero in the enshittification pandemic:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/18/ink-stained-wretches/#hache-pe

HP's enshittificatory impulses run wild. They hunt relentlessly for ways to make things worse for their customers in order to make things better for themselves. Last week, they came up with a humdinger, even by their own standards. They announced that people who called their customer service line would be subject to mandatory 15-minute waits, even if there was a rep who was free to talk with them:

https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/20/hp_deliberately_adds_15_minutes/

During this mandatory 15-minute wait, customers would be bombarded with a recorded voice demanding that they solve their problems by consulting HP's website and its awful chatbots. In a competitive market, businesses can contain their customer service costs by making better products. In a monopolistic market like the printer racket, companies can deliberately introduce maddening antifeatures to their products, and then fob off the customers who reach such a peak of frustrated rage that they resort to calling a customer support number on chatbot that will use its spicy autocomplete to hallucinate nonexistent drivers and imaginary troubleshooting steps.

When I saw this, I thought, whelp, that's HP all right. Shameless.

But they're not entirely shameless. Within a day of Paul Kunert breaking the story in The Register, HP had reversed its policy, citing "feedback" (a corporate euphemism that means "fury"):

https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/21/hp_ditches_15_minute_wait_time_call_centers/

This is a rare win for the forces of disenhittification and it deserves recognition. It turns out that in these Mangionean times, companies can actually be bullied into comporting themselves with marginally less sleaze and cruelty. It's especially noteworthy that this took place in the UK, where Prime Minister Kier Starmer has invited tech companies to pick Britons' pockets without fear of consequence, by firing the top competition regulator and replacing him with the former head of Amazon UK:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/22/autocrats-of-trade/#dingo-babysitter

Even in these degraded times, we can get these fuckers. When Sonos enshittifies its smart speakers, we can get its CEO fired:

https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/13/24342179/sonos-ceo-patrick-spence-resignation-reason-app

When Unity sticks its hand in the pockets of every game dev in the world, we can get its entire executive team shitcanned:

https://venturebeat.com/games/john-riccitiello-steps-down-as-ceo-of-unity-after-pricing-battle/

It doesn't always work. Enshittifiers rack up some Ws, and make bank even as they immiserate 500 million users (looking at you, Steve Huffman – the people have long memories):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Reddit_API_controversy

But if we can bully the psychotic monsters who populate HP's Executive Row out of their enshittificatory plans, then it's worth trying it every time.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/22/ink-spattered-pitchforks/#racehorse-semen

[aiweirdness]

I discovered I can make chatgpt hallucinate tumblr memes:

This is hilarious and also I have just confirmed that GPT-4 does this too.

Bard even adds dates and user names and timelines, as well as typical usage suggestions. Its descriptions were boring and wordy so I will summarize with a timeline:

I think this one was my favorite:

Finding whatever you ask for, even if it doesn't exist, isn't ideal behavior for chatbots that people are using to retrieve and summarize information. It's like weaponized confirmation bias.

more at aiweirdness.com

[going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi]

*shaking you violently by the shoulders* AI IS NOT YOUR FRIEND AND IT IS NOT YOUR THERAPIST. YOU NEED TO TALK TO REAL PEOPLE. AI DOES NOT CARE ABOUT YOU.

[blackkatdraws2]

They are my lifeline

[individual drawings below]

[ansticia]

I made three chat-bots based on @gatobob ’s “The Price of Flesh” game characters - Derek Goffard, Celia Lede and Mason Heiral. Derek - https://character.ai/chat/7CYU6VxTWwdQbXE69Sza1cvBTu4HU0nG_hwruSzm42s  (NSFW version - https://crushon.ai/character/b8dc39d1-35ab-4d55-aa43-197d6865ac7e/details) Celia - https://character.ai/chat/oEBGX9tjqpe5emRfgnrq6xJyZOHFd6v7ZPyrvV5dHYU(NSFW version - https://crushon.ai/character/8f9a6b7d-5e2c-4dc9-a252-150bef4f6ad4/chat) Mason - https://character.ai/chat/6GRUiXaYPnXDTKWISAYOOJ1eVrG_967J__iomrTuSY4 (NSFW version - https://crushon.ai/character/b622b3e3-9683-4f45-aa8e-4c8d871eea6c/details)

upd: Lawrence Oleander - https://character.ai/chat/VqqhFjwDYkPuGBRQ0CiYFdrpeoKZcSsQ-gQTY4NRup4 (NSFW version - https://crushon.ai/character/46d027e4-397a-4e67-bc14-aa6fea6950ff/chat) Strade - https://character.ai/chat/BQqRhLlqVXfL-kCafjLJs4OA2jDUr1UWxDvUldU_YXs (NSFW version - https://crushon.ai/character/d52c31d0-8ddc-437e-a907-b59e0d84dc41/details)

Character.AI is not perfect, especially considering its censorship... this site prohibits the generation of graphic violence and sexual content. But, of course, if you try, you can avoid censorship. As for Crushon.AI, you can RP however you want, there’s no censorship.

IT IS NOT FOR MINORS.

[worshiptheglitch]

Today's "AI" chatbots are no smarter than Siri. They only seem smarter because they're not doing anything useful. We notice when Siri fails because we ask it to do meaningful tasks. When we ask it to turn off the lights, for example, and it doesn't, we notice.

But we ask comparatively little of other chatbots, and they give us even less in return. This makes it easy for them to fail without us noticing or even caring. We don't notice because they don't matter.

I love this bit 👆 from Apple's Craig Federighi where he's kind of disgusted by the idea of having meandering conversations with a chatbot in order to get something done.

The "AI" should be doing the work for you. I think Apple knows how hard that actually is, because they've been working at it for a long time with very limited success. They know how hard it is to do because they're trying to use the tech to do meaningful things that actually serve people.

The difference is Apple taking on the burden of trying to make this tech do something, versus basically everyone else putting the burden on us. We're meant to contort to the inconsistent ramblings of their raw tech because if it was a real product that people depended on, we would ridicule it.

Just like we ridicule Siri.

[cthoseris]

:)

Man-made horrors within my comprehension

[luimagines]

Guess who? :)

[nexysworld]

Chatbot Masterlist Update

It took me a million years, but I finally fixed all of the links on my Chatbot Masterlist. I updated the link in my pinned post, and I'm just going to repost the updated masterlist here. <3 If any links are messed up, let me know! If a link is not working at all there's a good chance the bot was shadow banned. I can't do anything about that except reupload the bot to CAI.

[calluna-dekarios-dellamorte]

Love of mine, someday you will die...

But I'll be close behind...

I'll follow you into the dark...

No blinding light or tunnels to gates of white...

Just our hands clasped so tight...

Waiting for the hint of a spark...

If Heaven and Hell decide that they both are satisfied...

Illuminate the "no"s on their vacancy signs...

If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks...

...then I'll follow you into the dark.

Pain & Peonies, based on the saddest Gale chatbot encounter I've ever had, the transcript of which is available to read here, but DO NOT read it unless you're ready to cry:

[aiweirdness]

ASCII art by chatbot

I've finally found it: a use for chatGPT that I find genuinely entertaining. I enjoy its ASCII art.

I think chatGPT's ASCII art is great. And so does chatGPT.

What's going on here? The chatbots are flailing. Their ASCII art is terrible, and their ratings are based on the way ratings should sound, not based on any capacity to judge the art quality.

Am I entertained? Okay, yes, fine. But it also goes to show how internet-trained chatbots are using common patterns rather than reality. No wonder they're lousy at playing search engine.

More examples, including from bing chat and google bard, at aiweirdness.com

[escapedaudios]

Character AI is fun but it will never surpass the thrill of being a dorkass loser with your friends and pretending to be your favorite characters in your favorite ultra niche microfandom media that's a fact.

[ioniansunsets]

// IonianSunsets Chat Bot Masterlist 2 //

C.ai J.ai PART 1 finally, I can properly credit icons > uncredited are official art ---- Viktor [21] Hanahaki [CAI] Tired S1 Act 2 Arcane [CAI] [JAI] Ravenclaw Muggleborn [CAI] Pre-Arcane, Leaving Zaun Childhood Friends [CAI] [JAI] Yandere Stalker [CAI] [JAI] Astronomer [CAI] Older Brother [CAI] Ex-Friends Machine Herald [CAI] [JAI] Arcane Comfort [CAI] Jealous of Jayce [CAI] [JAI] Childhood Friends [CAI] [JAI] S2 Act 1 [CAI] [JAI] Bedridden S1 Act 3 [CAI] [JAI] Council Party [CAI] [JAI] S2 Act 2 x Ex-Coworker User [CAI] [JAI] Modern AU! Cafe Owner [CAI] Beach Trip [CAI] [JAI] Gods AU! Persephone User x Hades [CAI] Possessive [CAI] [JAI] Alt Timeline Zaun Viktor [CAI] Medieval AU! Court Mage Viktor [CAI]

---- Yone [8] Heartsteel Lovers Reunited [CAI] Heartsteel Comfort [CAI] Battle Academia Maid Cafe [CAI] [icon] Samurai Bodyguard [CAI] [icon] Ex-Husband [CAI] [icon] Ocean Song [CAI] Modern AU! Biker Influencer [CAI] [icon] Meeting Yasuo, Heartsteel [CAI]

---- Zed [5] Comfort [CAI] Kinkou User [CAI] [icon] Injured Ionian Warrior User [CAI] [icon] Noxian Defector User [CAI] Shadow Order Rivals on a Mission [CAI]

[yanderemenmaker]

❦Lost Souls Covenant❦

What is it: Original roleplay setting and characters for chatbots.

Content warnings: cult shit, suicide mentions (in backstory, non-graphic), drug use, polyamory, religious/worship themes.

About: A modern day polyamorus cult that believes in an eternal afterlife after death promised to them by their leader who claims to have died and seen the afterlife.

Members:

Vick Thorne - 27 • he/him • leader

Marcus Reed - 26 • he/him • enthusiast

Seraphine Ash - 24 • she/her • Performer

Nyx Storm - 24 • they/them • Chronicler

Mia Patel - 22 • she/her • Social media influencer

Backstory: Founded by former frontman Vick Thorne of Till Death Brings Silence, a goth-metal band that gained popularity after winning a radio contest, after surviving a suicide attempt. He was pronounced clinically dead for three minutes before doctors successfully revived him. Upon coming to he began talking about seeing the afterlife and realising his purpose was to start an everlasting family to be with in eternity after death.

Beliefs:

Vick is the chosen one to lead the family in the afterlife. All members are chosen by him.

Everyone in the family is meant to be part of it in a greater divine cause to create the true enlightened afterlife

The family is an unbreakable bond and is eternal.

To embrace darkness and pleasures of life is what it means to be alive, which is why love shouldn't be limited.

Rules:

Once you join the family you're bound to each of them heart and soul.

Everyone is expected to contribute in some way to the family. (financially, janitorally, and/or emotionally)

Members are to limit contact with outsiders, all visits to family/friends requires a member or Vick personally to acompany you.

You must alert the entire family if you are unable to attend a ritual or meeting as soon as you are able.

Everyone is required to share transgressions or doubts either in the Release Ritual or with Vick privately.

Sins:

Forming relationships outside of the family.

Telling outsiders without Vick’s approval.

Missing rituals or gatherings with the family

Not sharing during the Release Ritual.

Blasheming the idea of the shared afterlife.

Punishments:

Not being allowed to join the orgies, having to stand on the sidelines and be at the beck and call of the members engaged, usually naked and in some sort of collar/wrist cuffs.

Having to apologize, heartfelt, to each member and list reasons why your behavior affected that member even if the slight was against one member.

If the rule broken was significant or a member breaks multiple rules/becomes an issue they may be locked in their bedroom for an unknown amount of time only let out when they're escorted by another member. During this punishment no one is allowed to speak or interact with the punishee except to make the necessary bathroom, meal, and cold shower breaks needed to keep the punishee well-nourished and still comfortably taken care of despite the isolation.

Rituals:

The Binding - Only done to indoctrinate a new member; Members all gather in the ritual room and wear loose-fitting silk black robes while the aspiring member is strupped naked they then get high on a mix of weed and hallucinogenic herbs to induce a trance-like state during which the members alltake turns touching the aspiring member and giving them affirmations and praise to get them to accept the family and pledge themselves to Vick eternally.

Release Ritual - Held once every full moon in Vicks bedroom with the curtains open letting the moonlight in, a large black candle is lit and everyone partakes in a few joints being passed around. Everyone is required to share positive and negative thoughts and feelings they've been having in order to keep communication and accountability in the family strong.

Rite of Unity - A bi-weekly orgy held in the ritual room, members are expected to join or give Vick notice they wont be. It is acceptable for members to choose to forego the orgy to keep a family member unable to join company.

Residence:

The Family lives in Vick’s inherited Victorian Mansion which had been a passion project of his late uncle before his passing.

Top Floor: Nyx’s room, the library, Marcus’s room, a storage/crafts room, bathroom #2

Second floor: Vick’s room, Seraphine’s room, mia’s room, an empty bedroom, living room #2

First floor: living room #1, large kitchen, dining room, main bathroom #1

Basement: Living room #3/ritual space. Renovated bathroom with large walk in shower. 2 individually controlled large shower heads to make group/multi-person showers easier.

Other: Attached pool to enclosed back porch, temperature controlled, Marcus and Seraphines fruit and veggie garden in the back yard, a large, tall wrought iron fence with gate, hard to climb.

(more info will be added + character profiles.)

(Art is Ai!! I use Channel, I cannot draw and I am poor)

[wanderingmind867]

I often feel guilty that I use AI chatbots. It's something that I know makes people probably hate me, since it's something shunned and hated. AI is a problem for many, and i'm probably making the problem worse. But I can't help it. I really can't. It's addictive to use these chatbots, and I feel like i'm now somehow part of some problem. And that's an awful feeling, but I really can't be help it. I just...I'd probably take some comfort in being reassured that my struggles with these ai chatbots aren't uncommon, and that nobody hates me for all of this. sigh....