My dad's old email replies made me realize bots are getting too good at small talk

He passed away 4 years ago. Last week I got a spam reply from his old account that said 'haha yeah totally' with a perfect follow-up about the weather. My friend said I'm overthinking it but that timing and tone was too spot on for a bot. Has anyone else seen AI nail the casual talk stuff better than real people now?

2 comments

2 Comments

lunar894d agoMost Upvoted

That "haha yeah totally" line is exactly the kind of low-effort filler that bots pick up on, but the weather follow-up is the weird part. I'd run the email headers through a quick spam check and maybe set up a rule to auto-delete anything from that address going forward. It's unsettling for sure, but probably just a lucky coincidence with how much scraping tech learns from casual conversation these days.

the_alice4d ago

Totally agree with you @lunar89, I had the exact same thing happen with a random job recruiter email that used my high school nickname.