It used to seem like a joke — a prank — to get A.I. talking to A.I.

But these days:

"Students are writing essays with ChatGPT, and teachers are using A.I. to grade them. Workers are sending lengthy A.I.-generated emails to colleagues, who are responding with walls of chatbot text of their own. A.I podcast hosts are holding forth with A.I. podcast guests on topics like gas prices, the Iran war — and artificial intelligence.... In March, Meta acquired a social network designed for bots to talk to one another.... There was a telecom executive who had noticed customers sending A.I. voice agents to argue with his company’s A.I. customer service system. There was a man who used a chatbot to draft messages on a dating app to a woman who seemed to be doing the exact same thing...."

From "Chatbots Are Pushing Us Toward a Post-Human Internet/In matters of work, school and even romance, we turn to A.I. chatbots. But what happens when the bots begin talking to one another?" (NYT gift link).