My Life According to AI

My 12-year-old son is a great kid, except for one thing he doesn't exist

- DORIE CLARK

"WHY HAVEN'T I MET TOMMY?" That's what my girlfriend wanted to know, as she forwarded me a weblink. 

The article in question-a biographical recounting of my liferevealed a litany of fascinating facts. I'm a "world class" singer who has opened for folk-rocker Joan Osborne in Nashville. I'm a passionate adherent of Transcendental Meditation, which I was introduced to by my mentor, the filmmaker David Lynch. I'm a former executive director of the Connecticut Humanities Council.

And most salient to my girlfriend I'm also apparently the mother of a 12-year-old son who likes basketball and comedy (and whom she'd never met).

Of course, none of it was true. 

Artificial intelligence and its potential ability to destroy humanity has been in the headlines for years, accelerated by the breakthrough introduction of ChatGPT last November. World domination may eventually be the on the horizon, but for now, the more immediate AI-based threat is both banal and cuttingly personal: SEO link farms are now using generative AI to create (invented) content at scale, attempting to make money by driving clicks. And sometimes that content is about... people like me. Or, perhaps, you.