Last year, when AI was big and trending (it still is, but I was just discovering it...) I set up my ChatGPT account and used Dall-E to create an image of a "Handsome late 50's older man".
Why I would do that is beyond me, there are mirrors...
Anyways, I plucked a suitable handless image and, suspicious of a lot of mine own friend requests on Facebook created a profile for my AI generated image.
I'd like to introduce you to my ridiculously popular AI friend Will Sharp.
I subsequently spent the next couple of days adding every friend Facebook suggested. I had to answer a very few messages - "How do I know you?" - or merely ignore them, or pretend briefly to be a wealthy man heavily invested in Crypto or Banking or something else equally absurd.
...and people got interested and started asking questions and I got bored of the deception, felt guilty anyways, and logged out of that account and forgot my password.
Now, when logged into my own Facebook profile I get alerts for him. It's been almost a year, and this 'man', who posts nothing, does nothing, has proven to be ridiculously popular. Dozens of friend requests a day, and when I left him (after a couple of days) he already had a few hundred friends. His throwaway email account fills up with friendship requests, status and photo updates from people neither he nor I have ever met (and probably other AI's), and occasionally concerned emails wondering where he's been. People that accepted without question the friendship request.
Nobody knows he's my imaginary friend, he's far too handsome and popular.
It's gotten on time to kill him, and I tried, only I forgot his Facebook Login information, it was on a whim, after all, and so I continue to get these little Facebook bubbles telling me how much is new in his world, what's going on, all of what his friends are up to, and while I'm glad he's doing well I can't help be a little envious because everyone I know on Facebook is a Wing-Nut or Doodle...