It almost passed the Turing Test

This morning on AOL instant messenger, I got hit with some bizarre messages out of the blue:

kemptcoho: Let's look at the world with respect to theta.

doranchak: ok, let's do that

kemptcoho: what up

kemptcoho: so who is this?

doranchak: i was going to ask you the same thing

kemptcoho: and why am I your fellow prisoner? ha

kemptcoho: and I am Adam...

doranchak: adam who?

kemptcoho: Well now if I give everything away with nothing back then where is the fun?

kemptcoho: remember you sent me a message first...

doranchak: no, i didn't
doranchak: you did

kemptcoho: [06:36] DecayingCoho: Hello, my fellow prisoner!
[06:36] JudgeKaos: what up

What the hell???

So, I start thinking, maybe this was one of those AIM robots. This type of chat robot scrapes messages from blog posts and other online content. The robot then sends one of these messages to a person via AIM. If the person responds, the robot sends the response to some other person on AIM. When THAT person responds, the message is funneled back to the first person. And so it goes, causing all sorts of confusion.

Here’s where I start to wise up on what’s happening:

doranchak: oooh
doranchak: are you a trout bot? (Ed.: A trout bot is a variation of TheGreatHatsby)

kemptcoho: no....

doranchak: prove it 🙂
doranchak: ahh
doranchak: you're a coho bot
doranchak: my mistake 🙂

kemptcoho: and one proves they are not a bot how?

doranchak: that's a good existential question

kemptcoho: so you still haven't given me any indication as to who you are...

doranchak: my mommy told me not to talk to strangers

kemptcoho: or where I would know you from and what would prompt you to message me

doranchak: hey, whoever's on the other end of this: look up "coho bots" on wikipedia
doranchak: there's a bot funneling our responses back and forth to each other

kemptcoho: nice so we were put in touch by a bot how wonderful

doranchak: yeah, these bots are annoying, aren't they?

kemptcoho: very much so

kemptcoho: I was wondering why someone just messaged me outta the blue

doranchak: yeah, i was wondering that too

kemptcoho: I figured it was someone from the overnight forums at crackberry

doranchak: did you post "Let's look at the world with respect to theta." somewhere online?
doranchak: the bot scrapes messages like that to fool people into thinking they are talking to real people

kemptcoho: cant say that I did

doranchak: i wonder where it found that message

kemptcoho: so you are a real person?

doranchak: yeah; "kemptcoho" is the bot. it has two chats going on at once: one with me, and one with you. it's taking my messages to it and passing them along to you, and vice-versa.

kemptcoho: one word

kemptcoho: ANNOYING!

doranchak: agreed. 🙂
doranchak: well, nice chatting with you anyway. have a good day!

What a waste of time. But it was interesting to experience the scam. I think a lot of people get really angry when they experience the bot since it seems like some weirdo is stalking them (this is kind of what I felt at the beginning of the conversation above).