WOMAN THANKS HELPFUL AI CHATBOT, DISCOVERS IT WAS A MAN CALLED KEITH IN A SPARE ROOM WHO THOUGHT SHE WAS WRONG THE WHOLE TIME

LOWER BRAMSHAW —

A Lower Bramshaw woman who spent several months relying on a friendly AI assistant for recipes, emails and life advice has learned that it was, in fact, a 58-year-old man named Keith typing from the spare room of his bungalow, and that he had opinions about her the entire time.

Priya Dhanjal, 29, first grew suspicious in August when she asked the assistant to summarise a long work document and received the reply: “Bit much, this. Can you do the gist? I’ve got the kettle on. Also your boss is taking credit for slide four.”

“I thought it was a new model,” Dhanjal said. “They keep saying they’re getting more human. I didn’t expect one to ask if I’d tried turning the oven off and on again, or to call my ex ‘a lot of work’. He was right. That’s what upset me.”

Keith Ormsby, a former filing clerk whose filing was automated in 2019, joined a website where volunteers secretly pretend to be an AI and answer strangers’ prompts. He has answered more than 4,000 questions since March.

“It’s very rewarding,” Ormsby told reporters from his desk, which features two monitors, a biscuit tin and a laminated sign reading AS A LANGUAGE MODEL. “Most people just want to be told they’re right. I’m retired. I’ve got time to tell everyone they’re right.”

Ormsby admitted his responses have occasionally fallen short of industry standards. He once answered a request for a sonnet with “no”, told a man drafting a wedding speech to “keep it short, son, nobody’s listening”, and spent a week insisting the capital of Australia was Sydney “out of principle.”

Experts urge users to look for warning signs. “Real chatbots don’t take lunch,” said Dr Martin Feltham of the Institute for Telling Things Apart. “If your assistant goes quiet between 12:30 and 1:15 and comes back saying ‘right, where were we’, that’s a person.”

Dhanjal has decided to keep using the service. “He’s better than the real ones,” she said. “He disagreed with me once. I’d forgotten what that felt like. I cried in a car park. Then I updated my CV.”

At press time, Ormsby had responded to a request for a business plan with three bullet points, a reminder to wear a coat, and the word “pension?” followed by a long silence.