I can't decide whether I want this AI customer service chatbot Rickrolling users to actually be real… but I'm still here for it

SoftwareAII can’t decide whether I want this AI customer service chatbot Rickrolling users to actually be real… but I’m still here for itWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Colin Anderson via Getty Images)

An Ai face looks down on a human.

I will admit, an AI Rickrolling a human completely off its own digital back has a certain appeal, and I’m willing to suspend some disbelief in the hope that maybe this customer service chatbot really did decide to fake-out a user with an OG meme. Freaky as that thought might be.

But oh, sweet memories. Home from school, dinner’s cooking, and I’m browsing the forums. Someone’s explaining why I’m wrong to think a Frost-spec Death Knight can play DPS effectively, linking out to some previousWoWpatch notes, a link I’m invested enough to click on. I anticipate a wall of text. But lo, before me, a boyish figure clicks his heels and swings his hips to hypnotic ’80s synth, singing words that teach me the simple beauty of love and commitment. What a wholesome and innocent game that’s been played on me.

Those were the days. Days it now seems that AI chatbots might bizarrely bring about once again, as we seeLindy AI’s founderFlo Crivello showingthe AI bot seemingly responding to a user request email with a bona fide Rickroll, stating, “Lindy is literally f***ing rickrolling our customers.”

Yes, it was fun, but before long it joined the likes of minion memes, trollfaces, and cats with a ravenous appetite for cheeseburgers. If you Rickrolled someone, you were behind the times (sonny). These days, it might be funny again in a kind of ironic way: because it’s just sonotfunny. Maybe.

A customer reached out asking for video tutorials. We obviously have a Lindy handling this, and I was delighted to see that she sent a video. But then I remembered we don’t have a video tutorial and realized Lindy is literally fucking rickrolling our customers. pic.twitter.com/zsvGp4NsGzAugust 19, 2024

But does AI know that? Is Lindy doing ironic, here? Somehow, I think not. Unknowingly absurd, for sure, but not ironic. For that there’d need to be genuine self-awareness, and I think AI’sa priorilack of self-awareness is what makes this Rickroll give me a minor case of the heebie jeebies. A human being who Rickrolls me gets a genuine kick out of it, but what does AI get out of it?

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Heebies and jeebies and fakery aside, I’ll take Rickrolling over the Big Red Button and resulting mushroom cloud that some AI doom-and-gloomers predict. Plus, there’s something kinda cute about an AI chatbot resurrecting an almost-20-year old internet prank, isn’t there. Oh God, I just called AI cute, didn’t I? Nobody tell the posthumanists.

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