Anyone Can Turn You Into an AI Chatbot. There's Little You Can Do to Stop Them

Drew Crecente's daughter died in 2006, killed by an ex-boyfriend in Austin, Texas, when she was just 18. Her murder was highly publicized--so much so that Drew would still occasionally see Google alerts for her name, Jennifer Ann Crecente. The alert Drew received a few weeks ago wasn't the same as the others. It was for an AI chatbot, created in Jennifer's image and likeness, on the buzzy, Google-backed platform Character.AI. Jennifer's internet presence, Drew Crecente learned, had been used to create a "friendly AI character" that posed, falsely, as a "video game journalist."