Beauty and the Bot — a case of mistaken identity in an age of ubiquitous AI and daily deception
Calvin Mulligan, January 28, 2026 (c) All rights reserved (draft)
Artificial intelligence and its applications are ubiquitous to the point where we’re losing awareness of its all-pervasiveness in our personal and business lives. I’m listening to AI generated music as I write. Last evening, I listened to an analysis of the silver market offered by an AI construct referred to as “Asian Guy”. And we all deal daily with AI telephone reception and digital. As is the case with all technologies, AI offers both alluring benefits and less understood risks. There are good reasons to fear an AI-managed world even as we embrace its daily benefits. So on any given day, we will find ourselves unconsciously embracing its efficiency, illusory omniscience and willingness to do the hard, complex and tedious work. And on some occasions, we may find ourselves cursing its readiness to engage in exploitive mischief and enable serious criminal activity. My experience with Beauty and the Bot has reinforced the latter for me in a way I could never have imagined.
Living dangerously in a sea of deception
How many times a week are we reminded that we also live in an age of deception? We’re told those mainstream media headlines are fake, those juicy offers sliding into your inbox are fake, and those phone calls from India, South Africa or elsewhere are fake. Daily deceptions comes with ever greater immersion into an AI-infused world. We hear the accompanying warnings of course. Specialists warn us about AI-generated deep fakes – lifelike fabrications of humans images and features capable of deceiving even the most aware including family members. We glimpse some of the CGI fakery, but miss most of it. We now know there are voice modulators enabling Avatars to sound remarkably like their originals. Thus the personas of public figures like Kevin O’Leary and Donald Trump are stolen to hawk financial schemes to us on social media.
Such capabilities must terrorize politicians. Consider what it must be like to be the victim of a stolen persona and having to issue public disclaimers saying “buyer beware, that’s not me”. The price of fame has gone up massively given the ability of miscreants to put anyone’s words in the mouth of a look-alike duplicate. An individual’s character and career could be destroyed in an afternoon.
My personal experience, with two individuals I’ve named “Beauty” and “the Bot”, respectively, have driven home some of the hazards that come from the systematic commingling of human and AI entities. While aspects of this story are rather personal, I am sharing it because it is instructive and will perhaps serve a cautionary tale for others. We must learn to discern between real and cleverly fabricated humans and their ploys. My disclaimer here is that I am not IT-inclined, nor do I possess any depth of knowledge regarding social media security. I am not alone is this regard, however.
Judy and me
About four years ago, a pretty, young female Asian student, supposedly enrolled at Rutgers University, connected with me on this very platform. This female, I’ll call Judy, commented respectfully on the depth of my career experience. She wondered if I would consider mentoring her. I thought it a bit odd that Judy shared a photo, but engaged to find out who this person was and what exactly she was seeking. I looked up her name in the meantime and found a partially completed LinkedIn profile in her name and referencing Rutgers University. I asked Judy about her program of study.
In the course of the conversation, Judy indicated she wasn’t physically on the campus at Rutgers, but had transferred studies to a University in Australia as I recall. I probed further — she said it wasn’t entirely a matter of her specialty. Rather it was because she had encountered sexual harassment in the US. My radar began to ping. But I continued the conversation hoping to discover the sure signs of a bot. I decided the best route was to focus the conversation on the human aspects of our being as AI may have difficulty comprehending emotional nuance.
I led our conversation into the realm of our respective upbringings. I asked her about the biggest influences in her life as a youth growing up in China. She told me that she’d had a very industrious mother mother whose example inspired her. I had provided career coaching to Chinese students in Canada, so this wasn’t unusual to hear. Besides I could relate as I also had an industrious and self-sacrificing mother.
What about Judy’s use of language? Perhaps I could apply some amateur forensic linguistics to assess her authenticity. My earlier experience, particularly on dating sights told me that those engaged in “catfishing”, given their lack of mastery of the English language, often misuse English prepositions like “of” and “to.” And many of those errors seemed to be attributable to English-as-second language Asians. Yes, Judy’s use of English terms was rather mechanical in places, but overall it was high quality English. Besides, she had presented herself as Chinese, so some errors were perfectly understandable.
But some of Judy’s replies to my questions didn’t compute. They were non sequiturs. As an example of a non-sequitur, you might ask someone: “So, how did your family earn a living?” “The weather was nice where we lived” would be a non-sequitur. Judy offered a few of those. What was surprising was her persistence with her claims to personhood. She always had a comeback or rationale to cover the previous flaw. When I asked why was she sharing a whimsical, full body photo with her profile given her concerns about sexual harassment, for example, she blew it. She claimed such openness was a feature of her culture. That got my bullsh*t metre flashing red. Meet Judy, “the Bot”.
The dreary fakery of dating sites
Flash forward to the present. Despite a rather dismal previous experience with on-line dating sites, I found myself giving them another go in 2025. My old grievances quickly resurfaced. Their multi-layered networked marketing model is one of them, but ultimately, the biggest is the prevalent fakery. It seem like the catfishing is constant and pervasive. This time around, I also found the algorithm’s nudging of subscribers toward connection off-putting. Isn’t it just a tiny bit disingenuous to declare a “match” with a member opposite simply on the basis of a single interaction or comment. And what is generating the profusion of “likes”? Is a default feature of the program, or are subscribers individually indicating specific likes. And then there’s the frequency with which one encounters what I call “empties” or “ghosts”. These are profiles consisting merely of a photo, a name, a province or state, location and age. and devoid of descriptive detail.
There are the usual age-old games of course — photos of twenty or thirty somethings posted by 55 and 65 year olds. The photos range from studio quality to shadowy or grainy images shot at a distance of fifty feet. One also has to see past the filter of various forms of “enhancement” such as photo filters or other forms of subterfuge. And there are obvious fakes. Sarah Jones is listed as 45 years of age and from London, Ontario. And somehow in the mix there’s another Sarah Jones 45 from Winnipeg Manitoba using similar descriptive phrases in her profile.
A breath of fresh air
Suffice to say I had reached the point of dating site fatigue — cynicism actually and casually expressed this to a female opposite I’ve named Natalie to protect her identity. To my surprise, she responded empathetically. After a few comments, she expressed an interest in our getting to know each other better and suggested we shift to a more private social media platform. I hesitated briefly and then agreed as something in Natalie’s tone was a refreshing change from the usual. As we chatted, I sensed an open and delightful spirit — someone who was likely as welcoming as her smile in her photo. Her questions came fast as did her responses. And while I struggled to match her speed, talking to Natalie came naturally.
Our sometimes rapid fire conversations ranged over the entire weekend from Friday to Sunday. They flowed easily from the mundane to the monumental, varying from light and playful to serious and thoughtful. It was one of those moments of total preoccupation when I lost track of time. By the end of the Sunday evening, it was as if the two of us had been comfortably ensconced in a winter cabin for a snowy weekend retreat. Just as our conversation was about to end late Sunday evening, Natalie tossed a final rather direct question my way. I laughed and filed her question in reserve, promising a wider conversation the following day. Was her question really about the rules of engagement? I would have to admit, I hadn’t thought about the subject, so it would certainly be worth discussing.
An uncomfortable silence
I rose early on Monday morning and checked my iPad. Natalie hadn’t initiated a conversation. The weather was cold and snowy, so that was understandable. Such January weather typically brings out the worst in vehicles. Besides, who would want to start his or her work day, their head buzzing with the details of a “relationship” discussion. I checked back at noon to see if she had left a text. No, not yet. I wouldn’t disrupt her day. She was no doubt busy. So I simply left a couple of icons to signify I hadn’t forgot our conversation and was there for the next. Evening came and I found myself eagerly anticipating our chat. She would need time for dinner and attending to her kids of course, so I would need to give her time.
Eight o’clock arrived. I tentatively texted, asking about Natalie’s day and the subject she wished to discuss. Silence. At 9:10 PM, I left a link to a favourite song called “Why worry?’ It was a message to both her and myself. Earlier in the day, I had wondered if an accident of some sort had sent her to the hospital. The song was intended to counter any tendency on either of our parts to worry. At 10:02 PM, I messaged Natalie that given my early rising, I was off to bed and bid her goodnight.
Tuesday morning arrived bright and sunny with no early morning signs of life from Natalie. I was puzzled. My experience with her over the weekend said this individual was highly responsive. At the same time, I felt helpless. There was nothing meaningful that I could do even if she were in difficult circumstances. Well perhaps there was, apart from praying, something I found myself doing periodically during the day. I relayed a brief video of an mother eagle protecting her young from a blizzard beneath the cover of her wings. It was illustrative of God’s promise of protection beneath his wings from the book of Psalms. As a believer, Natalie would likely related to the imagery.
The shadows of doubt
By 2:18 PM, I had concluded the silence was out of character for the person I met four days earlier. Something was off. She had flagged the need to discuss a subject of presumed importance. And yet, unbroken silence reigned. Apart from a full body case, what could possibly have stopped her from responding with a simple: “Hi. Things are crazy busy here. Talk soon.” My first doubt had sprouted. Perhaps, as is often the case with electronic dating connections, Natalie had reviewed our conversation from the weekend, spotted one or more proverbial red flags and quietly decided she was disconnecting. I’ve experienced it several times before with on-line dating partners.
Or, was it possible perhaps that an elaborate deception was in play? Could a bot, eager to harvest personal information for financial exploitation, have infiltrated the platform. By 2:18 PM, I was 99% convinced a bot had infiltrated the space. I texted a pointy rhetorical question suggesting “Natalie” was perhaps another fabrication in a world of fakery. Perhaps this would surface the infiltrator.
A photo of Natalie appeared four minutes later accompanied by a text asking me how I was and apologizing for not getting back to me in time. The message said her her dad had been hospitalized and there was a lot going on at work. Unfortunately, I was already convinced that our platform was compromised and her persona had been hijacked. After all, wasn’t this precisely how Judy reacted to my challenge questions — by stubbornly persisting with the pretence that she was “as advertised”, and offering supposed proofs? And clearly any explanations for anomalies would logically be emotive in nature and thus less likely to be questioned.
I looked carefully at the photo. Yes, Natalie looked as charming as she had in her earlier photos, but I couldn’t allow myself to be distracted by that, I would call out the deception. I pushed back that the photo fell short of “proof of life” (identity) as it was taken in summer. Besides, the message, a forty nine word sentence lacking any punctuation was a very different style from Natalie’s earlier, well-punctuated and grammatically correct text. This totally consistent with the sloppy bot grammar I had encountered so many times before. I responded with skepticism, and a mild insult regarding the grammar, my usual tactic when I’m convinced I am sparring with bots. I through in a reference to Karma’s rewards for good measure). No, I wasn’t going to indulge any more Judys. On revisiting my rude retort, I noted a laughable irony in my I reference to bad grammar in that it contained a spelling error. Oh boy, when the universe decides to humble you, it doesn’t hold back.
Mistaken identity
The only problem was that seemingly there wasn’t a problem of the nature I had suspected. Seemingly, the photo and unpunctuated text message had actually come from Beauty, after what was perhaps a frazzled day and not “the Bot”. I stared at the “Whatchu mean by that?” text suggestive of confusion or anger — perhaps both. As I stared at the retort, I experienced a head spinning moment of confusion and then a stunning realization. It appeared that Natalie, the woman I had so warmly engaged in conversation a few days earlier was “back”. And that meant there had been no breach of the space, no hijacking of information and no deception. That was a relief.
But I was now experiencing the biggest “Oh sh*t” moment in recent memory. It was on parr with the time I pushed “Reply all”, sending an email describing a personal concern to the entire corporate executive rather than just my boss. One of the recipient VP’s told me in no uncertain terms that that minimally I owed my boss a profuse apology. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was all. The next morning, I entered my boss’s office and asked if she had lost any sleep the previous night because of my magnificent email screw-up. She looked up, smiled and said “nope”, she had slept just fine. I could have kissed her on the spot! Practicing the art and discipline of serenity amid storms became a personal objective that day and my former boss had modelled that capability in spades.
This situation was different. I had just inadvertently insulted the very individual I had been drawn to two days earlier and I thought rather highly of. And I had done it at a most inopportune of time with her dad hospitalized and work matters were pinging. I had no idea how my blunder was perceived at Natalie’s end. I could only guess she might have concluded she was dealing with some kind of nutty Jekyll and Hyde character. I tried to explain how the gap in our communication and my previous encounters with bots had predisposed my misjudgement. But how does a guy do that at this point without sounding stark, raving mad, particularly if she’d never shared my experience? It was next to mission impossible. I wished Natalie’s dad a speedy recovery and told her my misreading of the situation meant I owed her a big apology.
Reflections the morning after
In retrospect, the events of the past five days were like a dream followed by a nightmare. In the dream, I encounter a mysterious and engaging stranger who, over the course of three days, collaborates with me in fashioning a beautiful stained glass panel. And in the nightmare, a guy who looks a lot like me, trips and breaks this joint, personal work of art into dozens of pieces through his own clumsiness. (Well, that may be a bit over-dramatic, but you get the picture.) In the morning sun, the conclusion was obvious. I really had been played, not by an AI-driven Natalie imposter this time, but by the ghosts of the Judys I’d encountered over the years and by myself. It’s about as humbling as it gets. Perhaps even more so than simply being out and out deceived by AI.
My personal experience aside, the implications of AI’s penetrating of our society and increasingly our humanity at a time of peak deception is unnerving. I doubt the riskier implications been fully grasped. Certainly, AI is going to yield benefits and lifestyle changes that are incomprehensible at this point. But as my personal experience with Beauty and the Bot suggests, subtle risks lurk beneath the human-AI relationship. The one that I’m now pondering is wether encounters with negative AI entities will cause a new kind of trauma that prompts us to retreat and become excessively-guarded and less-trusting of engagement with our fellow humans. Or, can we somehow learn how to more effectively discern between AI and humans enabling us to remain open, unjaded and life-embracing? I pray the answer is the latter.
Natalie and me
As for Natalie, I can only speculate. I wish her, her dad and her family the very best. And I hope she concludes this was truly an unfortunate intersection of events and prior experiences that led to an AI-age case of mistaken identity. In time perhaps, she will step back, have a good laugh at my blunder and forgives my misreading of the situation. We’ve only just begun to get to know each other and there’s so much more about this woman that intrigues me. Life’s a bumpy journey and its most powerful lessons often come from our most painful failures. While this one qualifies for one of my top five, it’s certainly not the end of the world.
Is it the end of Natalie and me? At this point, I don’t know. She’s been quiet. I’m going to leave dear Natalie and the matter of whether she wishes to resume our conversation in her and God’s hands. Meanwhile, I’ve got some more practicing to do when it comes to living with serenity above the storms, because I know 2026 has a lot more in store.