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That 'totally human' customer service chat turned out to be a bot after 2 hours | Bot or Not - Vivisector

That 'totally human' customer service chat turned out to be a bot after 2 hours

I was convinced the person helping me on the support chat was real, they even joked about their cat and used a typo, but then I asked about a refund over $300 in Portland and they gave me the exact same scripted reply twice. Now I'm split, some of these bots are too good, but is that making us doubt actual humans online? Has anyone else been fooled the other way where a real person seemed like a bot?

2 comments

2 Comments

lucast812mo ago

Wait, did the bot call itself out with that duplicate answer, or was it just a glitch in the system? I'm curious if the exact same wording is what tipped you off, or if it was something smaller like the timing. Because if they're programming bots to copy real human quirks, then we're basically playing a guessing game with everyone we talk to online. That refund thing sounds like a classic trap, they probably have a rule for anything over a certain amount. But here's the real question: does it actually matter if the conversation was good and your issue got fixed? Or is the deception itself the problem for you? I've had the opposite happen, where a real person took so long to reply with such robotic lines that I asked if I was talking to a machine, and they got super offended.

felixhenderson2mo ago

Is anyone else checking how fast the bot replies compared to a human who's actually typing? My money's on it being the pause pattern, duplicating text is too obvious even for a sloppy script. I had a similar thing with a bank chatbot that answered in under a second but with typos every other word, which felt more real than the perfect copy-paste. Yeah, getting the refund fixed is nice, but if they're faking empathy while your account's being drained, that's where trust goes out the window.