I went viral with an AI fake

What does “real” even mean online?

It took me 5 minutes to prompt on ChatGPT to make the post.

This was this prompt:

“Make a post for AITA that is likely to go viral on Reddit.”

In less than 12 hours, it got half a million views, thousands of upvotes, and hundreds of passionate comments:

In a stroke of genius, ChatGPT even featured an African Grey Parrot, a species Reddit has an odd obsession with.

What seemed like obvious fiction to me (the sister’s name is “Jane” and the parrot’s name is “Pepper”) was taken as an actual window into people’s lives. Thousands of strangers even helped flesh out the backstory — speculating about the character’s parenting, state of mind, and social standing.

I started to wonder why these little stories online matter so much.

People get pissed when they find out these stories aren’t “real.” And I feel pretty damn guilty for tricking half a million people. Sorry — it was for “science.”

Hopefully, we learned something. What, exactly? Well, it turns out it’s incredibly easy to…