Babes, Bots and the Demons in the Machine 

Calvin Mulligan, January 28, 2026 rev Feb 8, 2026 (c) All rights reserved

Artificial intelligence and its applications are now ubiquitous to the point where most of us are no longer conscious of the extent of the integration of AI with human reality 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 bullion market offered by an AI construct referred to as “Asian Guy”. And most of us fight weekly to make ourselves understood to AI bots serving (or trying to serve) as customer service reps and intermediaries for public services providers and on-line retailers. (I still object with “I want a human, please”.)

It appears that an AI-managed future offers both alluring benefits and less discussed risks. Now we unconsciously embrace its efficiency, illusory omniscience and willingness to do the hard, complex and tedious work. But on some occasions, we will also find ourselves cursing its intrusiveness and complicity in mischief and in serious criminal activity. This is also the Age of Deception.

Living in a sea of deception

We have no choice. We’re forced to live our lives in a world of ubiquitous deception. We’re told those mainstream media headlines are fake, the events behind them are staged, those juicy commercial offers are fake, and those phone calls from Indian, South African and other call centres are fake. We’re learning our history is fake and many of the events appearing on our screens in the wider geopolitical realm are staged “false flags” —  specialities of the CIA, MI6 and Mossad. We have learned that many of the so called protests we’ve watched on our screen are also fake — courtesy of rent-a-mob services and professional protestors. (One investigative reporter reported he had found a particular woman appearing in 100 different protests.)

And if all that’s not enough to get one’s head spinning, the general public is awakening to the fact that many of those portrayed as kings, queens, popes, presidents and Prime Ministers are not the real thing. Rather they are CGI fabrications, mask-wearing actors, doppelgängers and cloned stand-ins. There are reportedly two or three Donald Trumps and at least one of them has referred to various individuals in his administration as being from “Central Casting” perhaps as much as 15 times. Fakery is big business.

This is the era of deep fakes — ever more convincing “digital forgeries” of humans capable of deceiving even the most aware including family members. The fake personas are manufactured by using face-swapping, voice-cloning and lip-synching technologies. I read that voice modulators enable impersonators to sound remarkably like the originals they imitate. Thus, the personas of public figures like Kevin O’Leary and Donald Trump are “borrowed or stolen to hawk financial schemes to us on social media.

The personal experiences I am about to describe are a microcosm of what’s occurring at the intersection of ubiquitous AI and what feels like peak deception. It illustrates the predatory nature of the dating site catfishing AI bot. And it also illustrates the danger of ever letting down our guard and suspending our disbelief. Is this why someone declared cynically: “Only the paranoid survive”?

The on-going systematic infusion of artificial intelligence into the human realm will bring ever greater risks. And while some will welcome immersion in an illusory world of AI, many of us, for a variety of reasons will remain steadfastly committed to tangible reality. We want  the real thing — real human to human connection and real human to real world connection. But it will be a struggle as our sense of what is real becomes hazier.

Those of us seek authentic connection, must continuous sharpen our skills in terms of our ability to discern between AI fabrications and their ploys on the one hand and real life and real humans on the other. The disclaimer here is that I am far from knowledgeable regarding IT, AI and their vulnerability to hacking and abuse. Rather, I tend to acquire sufficient understanding to become operational with a particular technology. I am confident, however, that I’m not alone in this regard.

Judy and me

About four years ago, a young female Asian student, supposedly enrolled at Rutgers University, connected with me on Linked-in. This female, I’ll call her 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 want so far afield for mentoring and shared a personal photo with her request. I engaged nonetheless in order to find out who this person was and exactly what kind of help she was seeking. I searched her name in the meantime and found a partially completed LinkedIn profile in her name, referencing Rutgers University. I began by asking 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 her studies to a University in Australia as I recall. I probed further and was told that this wasn’t entirely a matter of locating a better program in her field of study. Rather it was because she had encountered sexual harassment in the US. My BS 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 the 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 whose example inspired her. I had provided career coaching to Chinese students in Canada in the past, so this wasn’t unusual to hear. Besides, I could relate as I also had been blessed with an industrious and self-sacrificing mother.

In recent years, I had become intrigued by the field of  forensic linguistics. (As you may recall, forensic linguistics played a pivotal role in the capture of Unibomber, Ted Kaczynski in April of 1996). I wondered if Judy’s use of language might provide definitive signs of her true nature.  My earlier experience on dating sites 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 very warm where we lived”, would be a non-sequitur. Judy’s dialogue contained a few of them. What was surprising and mildly annoying was her persistence with her claims to personhood. She always had a comeback or rationale to cover the previous anomaly when I brought it to her attention. 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 BS metre flashing red. Meet Judy, “the AI 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 confusing multi-platform, integrated marketing model is one of them. Ultimately, my biggest complaint is the prevalent fakery.

It seems like the catfishing is constant and pervasive. Then there’s the matter of the profusion of questionable “likes” by subscribers opposite. It was almost as if it was a default feature of the program, rather than an express indication of a female subscriber’s leaning. The  preponderance of what I call “empties” or “ghosts” is equally annoying. These are dozens of profiles consisting merely of a photo, a name, a province or state, location and age with absolutely no supporting details about the individual.

There are the usual age-old games of course — photos of twenty or thirty somethings seemingly posted by 55 and 65 year olds. When it comes to dating sites in general, the photos range from studio quality to shadowy and grainy images shot up to distances of fifty feet. A subscriber must also see beyond the various forms of image “enhancement” such as use of photo filters or other forms of female 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. Both it seems like to laugh “until their cheeks hurt”.

Olivia — real or fabricated?

It’s fair to say that by the time I encountered the profile of “Olivia Baker”, I had reached the point of dating site fatigue — cynicism actually. I casually clicked on her image and voiced my annoyance with all the fakery, thinking this individual had perhaps had a similar experience. Her profile indicated Baker was a woman who loved animals and lived in Tadoussac, Quebec. Olivia responded to my contact immediately and expressed an interest in our getting to know each other. “She” suggested we move to a more private social media platform. I hesitated, knowing this was contrary to one of the basic cautions. Olivia insisted it would be more private, however, and I went along at her urging.

We chatted freely — me in my usual open, and relatively unguarded fashion (not recommended). The back and forth conversation continued over the next three days before I concluded Olivia Baker was an electronic fabrication. The catfisher had employed a fake profile and photos stolen from somewhere in cyberspace. “Olivia” was a Judy Plus — more sophisticated but a mischievous bot nonetheless.

Olivia’s conversational connection was polite, grammatically sound, and largely coherent. I wished the chatty, smiling Olivia to be authentic and allowed the exchange to continue beyond early signs of fakery. In short, I gave “her” the benefit of the doubt. As my suspicions grew, I did a reverse image check on her photos on Google. It came up empty, but noted the photos could have come from private sources. Ultimately, however, there was no escaping the fact I was connecting with an AI bot based on a profile constructed from photos stolen from somewhere in cyberspace and a concocted profile.

Telling anomalies 

While the experience is personal, I believe the instructive value of my experiences with “Olivia”, “Judy” and other bots, are instructive. So here are the anomalies that may serve to help others discern between bonafide humans and AI bots in this or other kinds of settings.

• the responses to my questions weren’t always consistent. On the one hand, the “Olivia” persona appeared to have no time pressures, but on the other hand “she” was too busy to read the preface of my book at the Amazon.ca website using the “free sample” access. ( I concluded the bot couldn’t access the preface of my book and had to defer.)
• The replies, formulated in excellent English, came too quickly. Most humans think, articulate more slowly and in less precise terms. I could barely keep up.
• “Olivia” hurried the relationship moving to “we” or “us” language more quickly than one would in the normal process of getting acquainted.
• “Olivia” ignored certain questions. The woman in the photo had tanned skin. My questions about ethnic background and family history went unanswered.
• The persona was too nice — too solicitous, too complimentary too “welcoming”.
• “Olivia” crossed a line by being too forward, asking me how many women I was talking to (on-line) and insisted that we discuss the matter the following morning. (This was the self-sabotaging step.)
• “Olivia didn’t have good memory and was seemingly incapable of follow up. After insisting we discuss the topic (above), the following morning, Olivia “forgot” about it and didn’t connect for a day and a half.
• “Olivia’s” response to my challenge regarding her authenticity after the silence was  unconvincing (It was an out-of-season photo) and a story about being busy at work and “her” dad being hospitalized. (of course the explanation had to be something emotive like a sick parent)
• “Olivia” lost her composure when I pushed back regarding the out-of-season photo and lack of credibility. (I went into trolling mode.) The “whatchu mean by that” language of “her” response was inconsistent with the polite, well-spoken persona presented earlier in the conversation.
• “Olivia” stubbornly refused to acknowledge the fakery. In fact, days later, the construct  bounced back on line saying it appeared someone was trying to hack “her” account and we should move to another platform. This was after I had dismissed the fabrication as such.
• The Olivia bot wasn’t multilingual. In any case, it stopped engaging when I switched to French. It’s response was limited to, “I don’t understand what you’re saying”. (That’s funny given that an individual supposedly living in Quebec would have understood my basic French)
• The persona then resorted to out and out lying, claiming it has informed me earlier that it no longer lived in Quebec, but rather resided in the US. This wasn’t true.
• “The catfishing bot was devious in its apparent exploitation of information I provided earlier in the conversation. The information that I had provided  regarding my Christian background was integrated into the Olivia persona portrayed in the persuasive “money shot”. The photo showed a female relaxing on her sofa in the living room of her home  with an open bible next to her. (Perhaps a form of matching or “mirroring” of my interests).
• The persona lacked empathy proportionate to the situation. After a day and a half of silence, the explanation offered sounded too much like “the dog ate my homework” to be genuine. The text was a forty-nine word run-on sentence, again inconsistent with the good grammar used in earlier messages.
• Experience with other bots tells me they can’t always live up to their claims. For example, Samantha may claim to come from Smallville, yet oddly isn’t aware of a town 15 kilometres away.

Further thoughts

The trend line suggests our world will be bombarded with ever more sophisticated and deceptive human imposters. My experiences aside, the implications of AI’s penetration of almost every fact of our society and in some instances our very biology is unnerving. Yes, we’ve created an near infinite number of automated applications and amazing super soldiers, but I doubt the array of implications have been fully grasped. Subtle risks lurk beneath the surface of the humanity-AI relationship and hybrid creations.

One concern is whether our encounters with negative AI entities will cause a new kind of psychological and emotional trauma that prompts us to retreat and become excessively-guarded. In an AI-dominated world, it is possible to remain open, un-jaded and welcoming? Will we, of necessity, become less-trusting and less willing to engage with our fellow humans? Or, can we somehow learn the unmistakable earmarks of human authenticity, and thus equipped, effectively discern between AI entities and human beings?

My next door neighbour is an IT professional. Perhaps I should invite hime to serve as my chaperone if I ever venture back into the wild and untamed world of dating sites. In the meantime, it’s time for a change. I’m going back to face-to-face relationships.

Note: Clarity Check reports the following (February 21, 2026):

We analyzed over 1 million dating profiles. Here’s what we found:

• Over 50% were from people who weren’t actually single
• 30% listed their careers inaccurately
• 20% used stolen photos

End notes