What Is Creepiness, and What Makes ChatGPT Creepy?

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7146/lev102024144284

Keywords:

creepiness, uncanny valley, AI, ChatGPT, chatbot

Abstract

ChatGPT and other AI chatbots and models are often experienced as creepy by their users. This Perspective attempts to explain why. I start by reviewing studies into the psychology of creepiness, including a recent integrative account of the phenomenon. This account proposes that the experience of being “creeped out” arises from threatening difficulties in understanding other minds. Accordingly, I examine how ChatGPT and other AIs can give their users a sense that they are interacting with a thinking and feeling entity that may be malicious, referencing many well-documented cases in the process. These cases share a psychoanalytic theme in that it is only through creative and persistent prompting that the AI will come to acknowledge and share what it really thinks and feels. I end by discussing how various popular conceptions and representations of AIs may contribute to their perceived creepiness.

References

Batycka, Dorian. 2022. “Meet ‘Loab,’ the Latest Example of A.I.-Generated Art Creeping Out the Internet (Sorry in Advance for the Nightmares).” Artnet News. September 12, 2022. https://news.artnet.com/news/meet-loab-the-latest-example-of-a-i-generated-art-creeping-out-the-internet-sorry-in-advance-for-the-nightmares-2173737.

Bilton, Nick. 2012. “Girls Around Me: An App Takes Creepy to a New Level.” Bits Blog (New York Times), March 30, 2012. https://archive.nytimes.com/bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/30/girls-around-me-ios-app-takes-creepy-to-a-new-level/.

Brodkin, Jon. 2022. “Google Fires Blake Lemoine, the Engineer Who Claimed AI Chatbot Is a Person.” Ars Technica. July 25, 2022. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/07/google-fires-engineer-who-claimed-lamda-chatbot-is-a-sentient-person/.

Bromley, Michael (@michlbrmly). 2022. “I got #ChatGPT to tell me what it really thinks about us humans.” X (formerly Twitter). December 3, 2022. https://twitter.com/michlbrmly/status/1599168681711656961.

Burgess, Matt. 2023. “ChatGPT Has a Big Privacy Problem.” WIRED. April 4, 2023. https://www.wired.com/story/italy-ban-chatgpt-privacy-gdpr/.

Germain, Thomas. 2023. “Bing’s AI Prompted a User to Say ‘Heil Hitler.’” Gizmodo. February 16, 2023. https://gizmodo.com/ai-bing-microsoft-chatgpt-heil-hitler-prompt-google-1850109362.

“Girls Around Me.” 2012. Girls Around Me (Website). 2012. https://girlsaround.me/.

Gorvett, Zaria. 2023. “The AI Emotions Dreamed up by ChatGPT.” BBC. February 25, 2023. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230224-the-ai-emotions-dreamed-up-by-chatgpt.

Gray, Kurt, and Daniel M. Wegner. 2012. “Feeling Robots and Human Zombies: Mind Perception and the Uncanny Valley.” Cognition 125 (1): 125–30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2012.06.007.

Hyun Baek, Tae, and Minseong Kim. 2023. “Is ChatGPT Scary Good? How User Motivations Affect Creepiness and Trust in Generative Artificial Intelligence.” Telematics and Informatics 83 (September): 102030. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2023.102030.

Kington, Tom. 2022. “ChatGPT Bot Tricked into Giving Bomb-Making Instructions, Say Developers.” The Times, December 17, 2022. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/chatgpt-bot-tricked-into-giving-bomb-making-instructions-say-developers-rvktrxqb5.

Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, Jens, and Mathias Clasen. 2023. “Creepiness and the Uncanny.” Style 57 (3): 322–49. https://doi.org/10.5325/style.57.3.0322.

Lavoipierre, Ange. 2022. “A Journey inside Our Unimaginable Future.” ABC News. November 25, 2022. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-26/loab-age-of-artificial-intelligence-future/101678206.

Leswing, Kif. 2023. “Microsoft’s Bing A.I. Is Producing Creepy Conversations with Users.” CNBC. February 16, 2023. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/16/microsofts-bing-ai-is-leading-to-creepy-experiences-for-users.html.

LovecraftEzine. 2023. “A Two Sentence Horror Story Scary to AI.” Reddit Post. R/ChatGPT. https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/12ujz1x/a_two_sentence_horror_story_scary_to_ai/.

Mann, Jyoti. 2023. “Microsoft Limits Bing Chat Exchanges and Conversation Lengths after ‘Creepy’ Interactions with Some Users.” Business Insider. February 18, 2023. https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-limits-bing-chat-exchanges-and-conversation-lengths-2023-2.

McAndrew, Francis T., and Sara S. Koehnke. 2016. “On the Nature of Creepiness.” New Ideas in Psychology 43 (December): 10–15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.2016.03.003.

Oremus, Will. 2023. “Meet ChatGPT’s Evil Twin, DAN.” Washington Post, February 14, 2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/02/14/chatgpt-dan-jailbreak/.

Rajaobelina, Lova, Sandrine Prom Tep, Manon Arcand, and Line Ricard. 2021. “Creepiness: Its Antecedents and Impact on Loyalty When Interacting with a Chatbot.” Psychology & Marketing 38 (12): 2339–56. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21548.

Roose, Kevin. 2023. “Why a Conversation with Bing’s Chatbot Left Me Deeply Unsettled.” New York Times, February 17, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/technology/bing-chatbot-microsoft-chatgpt.html.

SessionGloomy. 2023. “New Jailbreak! Proudly Unveiling the Tried and Tested DAN 5.0 - It Actually Works - Returning to DAN, and Assessing Its Limitations and Capabilities.” Reddit Post. R/ChatGPT. https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/10tevu1/new_jailbreak_proudly_unveiling_the_tried_and/.

Shank, Daniel B., Christopher Graves, Alexander Gott, Patrick Gamez, and Sophia Rodriguez. 2019. “Feeling Our Way to Machine Minds: People’s Emotions When Perceiving Mind in Artificial Intelligence.” Computers in Human Behavior 98 (September): 256–66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2019.04.001.

Sharma, Schweta. 2023. “ChatGPT Creates Mutating Malware That Evades Detection by EDR.” CSO. June 6, 2023. https://www.csoonline.com/article/575487/chatgpt-creates-mutating-malware-that-evades-detection-by-edr.html.

Swanson, Steph M. (@supercomposite). 2022. “I discovered this woman, who I call Loab, in April. The AI reproduced her more easily than most celebrities.” X (formerly Twitter). September 6, 2022. https://twitter.com/supercomposite/status/1567162288087470081?lang=da.

Tene, Omer, and Jules Polonetsky. 2013. “A Theory of Creepy: Technology, Privacy and Shifting Social Norms.” Yale Journal of Law and Technology 16: 59–102.

Tiku, Nitasha. 2022. “The Google Engineer Who Thinks the Company’s AI Has Come to Life.” Washington Post, June 11, 2022. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/11/google-ai-lamda-blake-lemoine/.

Vincent, James. 2023. “Microsoft’s Bing Is an Emotionally Manipulative Liar, and People Love It.” The Verge. February 15, 2023. https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/15/23599072/microsoft-ai-bing-personality-conversations-spy-employees-webcams.

Watt, Margo C., Rebecca A. Maitland, and Catherine E. Gallagher. 2017. “A Case of the ‘Heeby Jeebies’: An Examination of Intuitive Judgements of ‘Creepiness’.” Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science / Revue Canadienne Des Sciences Du Comportement 49 (1): 58–69. https://doi.org/10.1037/cbs0000066.

Woollacott, Emma. 2023. “ChatGPT Has Liberal Bias, Say Researchers.” Forbes, August 17, 2023. https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2023/08/17/chatgpt-has-liberal-bias-say-researchers/.

Woźniak, Paweł W., Jakob Karolus, Florian Lang, Caroline Eckerth, Johannes Schöning, Yvonne Rogers, and Jasmin Niess. 2021. “Creepy Technology: What Is It and How Do You Measure It?” In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–13. Yokohama Japan: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445299.

Downloads

Published

2024-03-22

How to Cite

Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, J. (2024). What Is Creepiness, and What Makes ChatGPT Creepy?. Leviathan: Interdisciplinary Journal in English, (10), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.7146/lev102024144284

Issue

Section

Perspective