It’s infuriating but not entirely surprising. Human beings see faces in electrical outlets and car front-ends. LLMs are built with the express purpose of mimicry, so it’s hard to fault people for defaulting to anthropomorphising these systems!

When people ask me what I want for a gift (birthday, Xmas) my only response now is “a gift subscription to [independent journalist-run media outlet]”. I figure if I’m paying for a couple of the ones I like on a rotating basis, that I can go grab archived webpages of the rest.

But it only works if enough people take up that social contract.