Is this board being overrun by AI bot posts?

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:there's are often posts written like this, passing from 04/06/2026 14:09 on this thread:
https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1321050.page

Anonymous wrote:Excellent question OP‼️

Personally I think the coupons are geared toward the consumers who will be purchasing the product then + there.

If I took the coupon off the product/merchandise, I might feel like I was “stealing” even though I do not think there is any law prohibiting it.

It will be interesting to see how others respond!

I assume these are AI. Correct?

Do you have a theory for what they're doing? Companies testing the technology? Seeing if people respond? Homework assignments for college AI courses?

That does seem like A.I. to me. That poster posted about 8 posts yesterday and about half of them looked like A.I. I removed those.

Interesting. Do you think it's a human cutting and pasting from an AI model? Or a bot practicing moderation?

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:there's are often posts written like this, passing from 04/06/2026 14:09 on this thread:
https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1321050.page

Anonymous wrote:Excellent question OP‼️

Personally I think the coupons are geared toward the consumers who will be purchasing the product then + there.

If I took the coupon off the product/merchandise, I might feel like I was “stealing” even though I do not think there is any law prohibiting it.

It will be interesting to see how others respond!

I assume these are AI. Correct?

Do you have a theory for what they're doing? Companies testing the technology? Seeing if people respond? Homework assignments for college AI courses?

That does seem like A.I. to me. That poster posted about 8 posts yesterday and about half of them looked like A.I. I removed those.

Interesting. Do you think it's a human cutting and pasting from an AI model? Or a bot practicing moderation?

I have no idea. It's all very confusing to me.

[Anonymous]

I realized that I love AI generated responses, because for years I have written in a similar style - bolded headings, organized and grouped subjects, numbered lists - especially if I am writing something that is instructional or informational. Of course, it would take a few iterations for me to compose and organize my writings like that. Now, with chatGPT - this can be generated instantly.

I would like to ask - why is that a problem? If AI is generating something that is useful and informational and not objectionable - why is that a bad thing?

Sometimes there are threads that run several hundred pages long. I would actually like to have AI generated summary page for that. I would love to have AI rather than trolls, racists, pervs and MAGA on this website.

I do feel that now DCUM has ceased to be informational. It is nowadays angry, mean and political. I feel when you enter this arena, you become like that. Many a times you also become mean and angry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:there's are often posts written like this, passing from 04/06/2026 14:09 on this thread:
https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1321050.page

Anonymous wrote:Excellent question OP‼️

Personally I think the coupons are geared toward the consumers who will be purchasing the product then + there.

If I took the coupon off the product/merchandise, I might feel like I was “stealing” even though I do not think there is any law prohibiting it.

It will be interesting to see how others respond!

I assume these are AI. Correct?

Do you have a theory for what they're doing? Companies testing the technology? Seeing if people respond? Homework assignments for college AI courses?

Why do you assume they are AI? Because of two exclamation marks? I am actually shocked.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:I realized that I love AI generated responses, because for years I have written in a similar style - bolded headings, organized and grouped subjects, numbered lists - especially if I am writing something that is instructional or informational. Of course, it would take a few iterations for me to compose and organize my writings like that. Now, with chatGPT - this can be generated instantly.

I would like to ask - why is that a problem? If AI is generating something that is useful and informational and not objectionable - why is that a bad thing?

Sometimes there are threads that run several hundred pages long. I would actually like to have AI generated summary page for that. I would love to have AI rather than trolls, racists, pervs and MAGA on this website.

I do feel that now DCUM has ceased to be informational. It is nowadays angry, mean and political. I feel when you enter this arena, you become like that. Many a times you also become mean and angry.

One issue is the "I asked AI and it says..." type of response. If the original poster, wanted such a response, they could ask AI themselves. They come to DCUM for a response from a human. If you put your own thoughts into AI and just let the robot format it for you, I suppose that wouldn't be so bad. But many of the AI responses are exceedingly long. They just fill up the thread with useless data.

Basically, DCUM has always been about interaction between people. We don't want it to become about interactions between machines.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I realized that I love AI generated responses, because for years I have written in a similar style - bolded headings, organized and grouped subjects, numbered lists - especially if I am writing something that is instructional or informational. Of course, it would take a few iterations for me to compose and organize my writings like that. Now, with chatGPT - this can be generated instantly.

I would like to ask - why is that a problem? If AI is generating something that is useful and informational and not objectionable - why is that a bad thing?

Sometimes there are threads that run several hundred pages long. I would actually like to have AI generated summary page for that. I would love to have AI rather than trolls, racists, pervs and MAGA on this website.

I do feel that now DCUM has ceased to be informational. It is nowadays angry, mean and political. I feel when you enter this arena, you become like that. Many a times you also become mean and angry.

If you just want summaries, you don’t want DCUM. And that’s fine! But the point of this board is for humans to converse. As awful as it sometimes is, it can also be thoughtful, supportive, informational. Like humans, it’s messy. If you don’t want the mess, go somewhere else.

Also, although your writing style might be similar to AI stylistically, there’s a big difference between what you write and what AI generates. You’re a human, writing thoughtfully about what you know to be true. Your responses reflect your judgment, your research, your experiences. That is completely different from a computer digesting information and spitting out a response without human judgment, even if the answers sound and are formatted similarly. I trust humans to give me insight and advice, to discuss and debate. I don’t trust machines to do that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:there's are often posts written like this, passing from 04/06/2026 14:09 on this thread:
https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1321050.page

Anonymous wrote:Excellent question OP‼️

Personally I think the coupons are geared toward the consumers who will be purchasing the product then + there.

If I took the coupon off the product/merchandise, I might feel like I was “stealing” even though I do not think there is any law prohibiting it.

It will be interesting to see how others respond!

I assume these are AI. Correct?

Do you have a theory for what they're doing? Companies testing the technology? Seeing if people respond? Homework assignments for college AI courses?

Why do you assume they are AI? Because of two exclamation marks? I am actually shocked.

IMHO, the grammar is so poor, it can't be AI.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I realized that I love AI generated responses, because for years I have written in a similar style - bolded headings, organized and grouped subjects, numbered lists - especially if I am writing something that is instructional or informational. Of course, it would take a few iterations for me to compose and organize my writings like that. Now, with chatGPT - this can be generated instantly.

I would like to ask - why is that a problem? If AI is generating something that is useful and informational and not objectionable - why is that a bad thing?

Sometimes there are threads that run several hundred pages long. I would actually like to have AI generated summary page for that. I would love to have AI rather than trolls, racists, pervs and MAGA on this website.

I do feel that now DCUM has ceased to be informational. It is nowadays angry, mean and political. I feel when you enter this arena, you become like that. Many a times you also become mean and angry.

Did you have AI write this just to make a point or are you truly this bad of a writer?

[Anonymous]

I think there’s a difference between posting something written by AI and passing it along as “real” and making clear from the outset that “I asked AI and it said . . .” The first is deceitful and the second is not. Sometimes when there’s a request for purely factual information why not just use AI—so long as you disclose it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think there’s a difference between posting something written by AI and passing it along as “real” and making clear from the outset that “I asked AI and it said . . .” The first is deceitful and the second is not. Sometimes when there’s a request for purely factual information why not just use AI—so long as you disclose it?

Because Jeff doesn’t want AI answers on his site. He wants human answers, human interaction.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think there’s a difference between posting something written by AI and passing it along as “real” and making clear from the outset that “I asked AI and it said . . .” The first is deceitful and the second is not. Sometimes when there’s a request for purely factual information why not just use AI—so long as you disclose it?

Because as Jeff just said, if people wanted to use AI, they would. They clearly wanted advice from real humans.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:I am fairly comfortable in saying that poster is not an A.I. bot. That said, there have been two recent issue with A.I.:

1) Posters using A.I. to compose their responses. They don't include their own thoughts but simply post something like "A.I. says blah, blah, blah". I delete those if they are brought to my attention.

2) A.I. bots that either start or respond to threads. There was a day in which two separate bots did this to over 100 threads. The responses and initial posts in new threads were very realistic. I only discovered it by accident. I have not see this occur on any other days, though I could easily have missed it happening again. Of course, I also delete these.

Despite these two issues, I wouldn't say the board is being overrun by A.I. bots. The real damage of A.I. to DCUM is that people get their answers from A.I. rather than DCUM and, hence, our usage is going down.

Something about that in particular is so bleak to me. Posting on a message board is completely voluntary; if you're so lazy that you need Chat GPT to compose your answer for you, why bother doing it?

I swear AI is going to be the death of society as we know it.

It's not just here, but other places I frequent. The only reason I frequented those places was because they had real people with authentic responses and it's all gone to S*** now. I still call out the AI BS when I see it, but it's a losing cause. Agree it's really a shame because most of the people relying on those canned responses are being grossly mislead

There was a thread on off-topic almost a year ago about "How often do you get advice from AI as opposed to DCUM" and I was like...wtf.

Why would you get AI from a chatbot? A chatbot. Like, I get using it to come up with a meal plan or a road trip itinerary but advice? You would rather talk to a robot than other humans for advice? What on earth?

And there were a number of people who said depending on the subject/what mood they were in they'd rather go to Chat GPT than here. One weirdo even said that she trained AI to sext with. (Not joking, I specitically remember my friends and I laughed about that one for weeks.)

It's a scourge. And then people wonder why we have cases like those two kids committing suicide after talking to a chatbot and it's like, adults are talking to chatbots. We've normalized it for these kids.

Most of the answers from AI actually come from scouring threats like this and Reddit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think there’s a difference between posting something written by AI and passing it along as “real” and making clear from the outset that “I asked AI and it said . . .” The first is deceitful and the second is not. Sometimes when there’s a request for purely factual information why not just use AI—so long as you disclose it?

Because as Jeff just said, if people wanted to use AI, they would. They clearly wanted advice from real humans.

Actually I’m not sure that everyone on DCUM knows the ins and outs of AI. But ok.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think there’s a difference between posting something written by AI and passing it along as “real” and making clear from the outset that “I asked AI and it said . . .” The first is deceitful and the second is not. Sometimes when there’s a request for purely factual information why not just use AI—so long as you disclose it?

Because as Jeff just said, if people wanted to use AI, they would. They clearly wanted advice from real humans.

Actually I’m not sure that everyone on DCUM knows the ins and outs of AI. But ok.

And thank god for that. I’m sick of AI dominating every discussion, every conversation. I refuse. I’m grateful to Jeff for drawing a line.

[Anonymous]

People prefer AI because it’s sycophantic - it flatters the human, unlike many DCUM posters to ridicule others. I am sad to see less interaction here, but I can understand why it’s happening. And the PP above who mentioned that AI uses ‘sources’ like Reddit is correct.