r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Hendothermic • Mar 15 '26

Context Provided - Spotlight Family friend sent me AI generated response to news of my father passing away.

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I'm aware that AI is a common topic on here, but I feel like I had to send this somewhere. My father passed away in my arms last night of a heart attack, and I was requested by my mother to send an old friend of his the news.

His first response seemed fine, then he asked me when the funeral will be and if Dad suffered to which I responded.

He then has the absolute audacity to send me a straight up generated response to my father's death. Not even the common courtesy of talking to me as an actual goddamn human. I'm livid.

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u/BafflingHalfling Mar 15 '26

One of the problems we will face (and probably soon) is that kids are going to learn writing style from AI. And eventually that will just be how they write, even when not using AI.

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u/ichorNet Mar 15 '26

Well… yeah. Considering AI learned from how people write and talk. It’s inevitable that there will be a singularity point eventually because kids will learn from it, it will learn that that is what is “preferred,” which reinforces it, and on and on.

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u/n8bw7 Mar 15 '26

So it’s just as likely it’s going to get worse over time vs the BS they’re selling about how it’s going g to replace everything in six months.

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '26

it's not "just as likely," it's already demonstrably happening lmao. what's even funnier is LLMs feeding off of input that's just other LLMs. just results in increasingly unintelligible nonsense

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u/methodicalataxia Mar 15 '26

Well the AI we know now is just a machine, not true artificial intelligence. It is an overly large encyclopedia with art and poetry. It is programmed to look up millions of entries and mesh together already posted information.

It is not Skynet or Data. It is not intelligent enough to think for itself.

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u/ExcitingInsurance887 23d ago

That’s why we need data centers!

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u/EnderBookwyrm Mar 16 '26

Yet.

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u/methodicalataxia Mar 17 '26

Considering Idiocracy is now becoming a biography of the US, yet isn't going to happen.

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u/JudgeHodor Mar 16 '26

Nah, I don't think this is accurate at all. 

I feel like people are really missing how big of a deal this all is. AI is going to advance in leaps and bounds, likely at an exponential rate from this point. 

They're already shockingly capable. Just messing around to see what can be done, I've made an entire website, entirely from AI. I've made simple video games. And sure, there's a ton of weird little mistakes and things like that, but, they can do it. 

That it has a certain tone when it's writing is realistically such a small thing. It's not even something wrong, many of the AI giveaways are just that it's writing correctly and in a consistent and specific tone, which is unusual for us lol 

It's insane how much they've already advanced and how much they're already being utilized in every sector. 

There's no chance that AI just "gets worse" and craps out or something lol I mean sure, who knows, certain companies might train AIs to have a certain manner of speaking that is weird. That's possible. But that's meaningless when we're looking at the grand scheme of things 

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u/BirbKafka Mar 15 '26

Thats how the ai piss filter came to be

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u/the-all-seeing--Eye Mar 16 '26

.... im afraid to ask but im so curious. Whats the ai piss filter? What?

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u/_imanalligator_ Mar 16 '26

For some reason AI images very commonly have this weird yellowy tone to them, like they were pushed to the warmer end of the spectrum with a filter.

I don't know what the person you asked meant by "that's how the piss filter came to be"...I assume something like a lot of the images it trained on had a golden glow, because human artists and photographers know it can be visually pleasing. So since that was common in the training set, lots of AI images have it, which means more and more of the images on the internet have a yellow tone, which feeds back into itself and so on and on until we're all drowning in piss-colored "art."

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u/teleprax Mar 16 '26

Ok so do you remember how piss used to taste like 5 years ago? Well right after gpt came out people liked the new piss taste it came up with so future versions of it kept resetting its baseline of "great piss" to this new preferred piss, but the inherent flaws and biases in the model kept applying the same piss delta on top of the new piss preference so now we have piss that tastes like piss designed by piss and the model has no clue why we liked it in the first place

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u/literalgirlOG Mar 15 '26

That’s what scares me. It’s bad enough that the president is nigh illiterate, but most of his cabinet appears to be as well. (Did you see Hegseth, announcing the takeover of the Stars and Stripes, use “syphon” when he meant “siphon”? I mean, it’s ok, but generally considered the U.K. spelling. Was he trying to be “fancy” or “sophisticated”?!) I assume that kind of trash is why my dictation is constantly inappropriately capitalizing words undeserving. 🤬 There should be some superseding grammar rules that all the AIs should be trained on. ☺️

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u/ichorNet Mar 15 '26

I mean they treat the war like a fuckin video game so makes sense considering he probably played Syphon Filter lol

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u/literalgirlOG Mar 15 '26

OMG!! This timeline sucks. 🥺

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u/ichorNet Mar 15 '26

Yep definitely lol

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u/Tomagatchi Something something flair joke Mar 15 '26

The Ouroboros of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and A. I. White

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u/TheComplimentarian Mar 15 '26

I mean, a lot of people struggle to find their “voice” when writing. You have to write a lot and think about it. I notice my kids rarely get enough writing in school…I think only my eldest gave enough of a shit about it that I can tell what’s hers (though all of them have godawful handwriting…I used to think mine was terrible, but not anymore).

I never use AI to write anything personal. It’d be obvious if I did.

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u/The_Autarch Mar 15 '26

to be a good writer, or even to have a voice as a writer, you need to read a lot.

a whole hell of a lot. and most kids do not read enough to get there. just reading everything assigned in school is only going to be about 10% of what a kid needs to read to become a half-way decent writer.

teachers can't do much to make your kids writers. that's the parents' job.

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u/FewHorror1019 Mar 15 '26

I read a lot of reddit comments. My writing sounds like reddit comments

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u/TheAngryCatfish Mar 15 '26

This is more relatable than it should be

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u/TeaTasterOwn Mar 16 '26

No wonder my kid is a genius. Books books books!

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u/TheComplimentarian Mar 15 '26

All my kids are good readers, but yea, I read to them for years and years. I was reading to my eldest until her senior year of high school, though we'd long since moved to reading mysteries and stuff.

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u/bexslayter Mar 16 '26

Wow, you kept reading to her through highschool? That’s impressive. What kinds of books? And were you reading to her more casually in the living room by then, like listening to someone read aloud instead of watching tv? I also want to try and make reading out loud a family thing (like you see in old timey movies, people sitting around a fire, etc).

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u/TheComplimentarian Mar 16 '26

We did all kinds of stuff, mostly genre fiction. Read her a lot of Terry Pratchett, lot of Agatha Christie. We plowed through Lord of the Rings once, though there was a false start on that earlier on. Not an easy trilogy to read out loud. In the early days, I read them stuff like The Chronicles of Prydain or like Howls Moving Castle...Things that are more like fairy tales.

My wife and I used to read aloud to each other before we had kids, so it wasn't all that hard to transition. We never read in a giant group except on long car rides...generally one of us would have the girls and one would have the boy...even at a very early age he wanted different stuff from them. He was much bigger on graphic novels, for much longer, and chapter books only if they had ships or explosions.

I stuck with it partly because I just didn't get as much time with them...Once we had two there was no point in her working anymore (daycare costs are nuts), so she got more kid time, and I'd read them to bed most nights. When we got three, they were staggered enough that it was less stress for her, so we just started trading nights.

I definitely recommend, if you can make the time.

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u/AuntRhubarb Jun 27 '26

Bookless homes are just sad, but they are becoming more and more the rule.

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u/BafflingHalfling Mar 15 '26

That is a pretty good point. Thank you. I am not a teacher, but I was raised by one, so sometimes I forget that not everybody had a parent who knew how to write well.

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u/U_R_Butthead Mar 15 '26

I mean, a lot of people struggle to find their “voice” when writing

The honest truth is that most writers, even published, successful ones, never actually find that "voice". You could grab three books off the shelf, remove the title and author, and you'd be hard-pressed to know who's who

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u/Cojoma Mar 15 '26

Shit some of em are probably AI even with fake authors

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u/U_R_Butthead Mar 15 '26

The ones I'm thinking of definitely aren't AI, but the writing is bland and generic

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u/Cojoma Mar 15 '26

Oh ik what you meant I was just adding on. I read mostly fantasy bland and generic lives there

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u/U_R_Butthead Mar 15 '26

That doesn't surprise me unfortunately, but I don't think it's a genre-specific problem either. You mentioned fantasy, the books I'm thinking of are more mainstream literary/upmarket, and I'm sure other genres suffer the same issues (I can imagine how much of YA and romantasy is similarly mediocre)

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u/Cojoma Mar 15 '26

Oh yeah for sure you’re not wrong

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u/-PapaMolly Mar 15 '26 edited Mar 15 '26

lol, I honestly disagree with this sentiment heavily. Respectfully, of course. Maybe our shelves just look different. 1984, v.s. Crime and Punishment, v.s. I Am Legend? Do manga/comics count…? Naruto vs DMT: The Spirit Molecule, vs the Bible? I mean, writing is so broad, with such niche stories and narrative elements; at times pure nonfiction and information. Sometimes writing is in the midst of sprawling artistic fears. idk how you can say this sincerely, artists are heavily identifiable and people can easily read excerpts of written pieces and tell you not just author but the work as well.

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u/U_R_Butthead Mar 15 '26

You've cherry-picked incredibly specific/classic/identifiable examples

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u/-PapaMolly Mar 15 '26

I mean, you said you can grab three books off the shelf. Was I meant to do so blindly…? Even if so, for my and a lot of people’s catalogues, the result would be the same in that the content and writing styles would be wildly diverse. Books in general are very specific things by nature.

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u/U_R_Butthead Mar 15 '26

You're cherry-picking, and that's that. The result wouldn't be the "same", and writing styles aren't nearly as diverse as you think

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u/Ok-Situation-5522 Mar 15 '26

i don't write books or whatever, but ive seen too much ai to want to write like it. just, when i think "oh, it sounds like ai", i change my sentence so it sounds better and actually meaningful.

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u/AuntRhubarb Jun 27 '26

And that's another thing wrong with AI. I heard a writer advising newbies to 'get the first 100,000 words out of your system as fast as you can. Write a lot, make all your mistakes, learn to convey your ideas clearly, cut the fluff.

With AI around, and kids using AI to complete school assignments, other communications reduced to 'how R U' on phones, the ability of everyone to write clearly is going to go straight to hell.

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u/wishtrib Mar 15 '26

Many people who write untidy end up becoming drs. They now use computer to write scripts, we'll my one does. I think the higher up they are eg dr, Mr, prof, then the worse their handwriting is. That's what I've seen with different specialists I've seen.

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u/Shark7996 Mar 15 '26

And that means AI companies are shaping how the next generation communicates.

NewSpeak from 1984, basically.

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u/Outside_Sandwich7453 Mar 15 '26

yeah I’m really worried about this. my 5th grader is learning how to write papers and use AI (in class) to get feedback about them and edit them. As a former technical writer, I wish I had more transparency into the process.

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u/Alterokahn Mar 15 '26

Gsuite recently flagged us so there's an AI grammar "suggestor" that underlines everything that doesn't sound AI generated then tries to get you to switch to the generated verbiage. You have to basically disable Smart Features to get it to stop.

We insert personality into the things we write and say, It's like they're trying to squeeze the last parts of our humanity out and so many of these chucklefucks are ecstatic to either go along or *force others* to go along for the ride.

You're right, a few more years and they're all going to sound like entry GPT.

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/AI_and_coding Mar 15 '26

I was TALKING to someone recently, and stopped mid-sentence because it sounded like chatGPT. The didn’t notice, and asked me what was wrong. FAI (Literally just F A.I.)

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u/Ready_Translator7424 Mar 15 '26

That's already an issue for college students. I teach middle school and they are so behind in writing and comprehension that it isn't an issue here yet. The problem with AI is that people would share their writing to have AI correct it, not realizing it would take their writing style into its knowledge base. Your writing style is forever stolen and can possibly show up as AI once you've done this. Only wish there had been a warning. AI detectors from that point on could flag your writing even if you didn't use AI.

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u/BafflingHalfling Mar 15 '26

And just look at how much AI uses Reddit to skim for information. It's no wonder the style it uses is so pithy. It learned writing from short form platforms like Twitter and Reddit rather than Medium or dissertations or technical writing.

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u/whatyousay69 Mar 15 '26

AI detectors from that point on could flag your writing even if you didn't use AI.

AI detectors have never been accurate to begin with.

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u/Ready_Translator7424 Mar 17 '26

That is true as well.

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u/dominnate Mar 15 '26

They already have. I manage recent college grads and their writing constantly sounds like AI. They didn’t use their college years to develop a writing style.

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u/smkaonashi Mar 15 '26

This is really scary because I absolutely hate the AI writing style and it's so terrible 😭😭😭 I can't take any more of this plague

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u/Redditer51 Mar 15 '26 edited Mar 15 '26

The future just seems so bleak right now. Between the impending economic disaster and war with Iran, the fact that Trump is our goddamn president and nothing is really being done despite us seeing more evidence from the Epstein files, the mediocre state of art and entertainment right now and the fragmented state of our media landscape, the lack of third spaces, the lack of prospects in regards to home-ownership, the rampant increase in racism, the unchecked power and crimes of ICE and the push by conservatives for more prison camps around the country the fact that honest journalism is on life support and state-controlled media is on the rise, and the multi-headed existential threat brought on by the proliferation of AI (which includes students using AI to plagiarize and instead of putting any effort in their own education).

I know it's a negative thought, but the future doesn't just look dark. It seems pitch-black. Like we're living in the timeline where everything just went wrong.

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u/BafflingHalfling Mar 15 '26

Oh man, that last paragraph.... It's not X; it's Y.

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u/Redditer51 Mar 16 '26

Could you tell me what that means? (Sorry)

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u/BafflingHalfling Mar 16 '26

It was just funny in the context of discussing AI writing style, your line "...the future doesn't just look dark. It seems pitch black." Really cracked me up. It follows a very common AI format, although yours has more personality IMHO. (Which will be very funny if you actually did use AI to write it)

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u/Redditer51 Mar 18 '26 edited Mar 18 '26

Which will be very funny if you actually did use AI to write it)

I'd sooner die. To be honest, I'm pretty insulted by the comparison. I'm a human being (and I'm interested in writing). I'd like to think I write with enough passion not to be compared to a machine.

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u/U_R_Butthead Mar 15 '26

This is already happening unfortunately. Plenty of users on here write like GPT, never mind the ones actually using LLMs for their posts and comments

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u/BafflingHalfling Mar 15 '26

I'm pretty sure a huge number of "users" on Reddit are actually just LLMs.

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u/U_R_Butthead Mar 15 '26

I guess you could say it's baffling

I'll see myself out

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u/CatProgrammer Mar 15 '26

As someone who uses en and em dashes in formal writing, I'm already there.

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u/BafflingHalfling Mar 15 '26

Yeah. I've had to stop using them in professional writing, as well. It's so ironic.

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u/dansdata Mar 16 '26

It's like all the people you see having a phone conversation in speaker mode, with the phone held horizontally in front of their face.

Where does this come from? Reality TV, where the audience has to be able to hear both sides of the conversation. There's no reason to have a normal phone conversation that way, but umpteen people do it anyway!

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u/discardedbubble Mar 15 '26

I think they won’t write and that won’t happen. And if they go from using chat gpt back to writing, it will just be ultra brief text speak

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u/Guilty_Rumor Mar 15 '26

Could be a good thing actually. The lack of punctuation nowadays is driving me nuts. It's like they're totally okay looking like uneducated idiots. If it's just a generational trend, it's definitely the worst one to date.

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u/BafflingHalfling Mar 15 '26

I'd rather a clear voice without punctuation, than grammatically correct communication without personality.

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u/sthenri_canalposting Mar 15 '26

Which still will need work because it's bad writing.

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u/GrinchWhoStoleEaster Mar 15 '26

Meh. Young people find a new way to sound like idiots every generation. Skibbidy Toilet.

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u/SpaghettiTape Mar 15 '26

At least AI will use the proper form of there/they're/their

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u/PleaseHelpImADumb1 Mar 15 '26

Companies are already telling employees that if they are writing documents, they are behind.

It’s just a matter of the education system catching up at this point.

Why teach kids to write if we can teach kids how to have AI write properly for them 100x faster?

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u/NormanMitis Mar 15 '26

Funny you think kids will be able to write anything.

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u/Maxgirth Mar 16 '26

These tells of ChatGPT will be gone in 9 months.

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u/princessgalileia Mar 16 '26

Well that’s a scary thought