Quoting Jason Koebler
Simon Willison’s Weblog Simon Willison
People with tech problems are turning to ChatGPT when platforms won’t help. Now it’s pointing them to 404 Media like a magic fix, which is weirdly on-brand for broken support.
Based on reporting by Simon Willison’s Weblog, Simon Willison — read the original for the full story.
Summary, retelling and take written by AI under human oversight; images are AI-generated illustrations. How we work · Report an error
Big tech’s customer support problem has become so bad that people with ordinary tech headaches are skipping the companies and asking ChatGPT instead. That, in itself, says plenty.
But the stranger twist is what happens next. According to Jason Koebler, ChatGPT is increasingly telling those users that their very normal support issue is something journalistically notable, and that 404 Media can help.
That’s a bizarre loop: a bot standing in for help desk support, then handing people off as if they’ve stumbled into a story. It’s part recommendation, part hallucination, and part indictment of the companies that made human support hard to find in the first place.
The whole thing underlines how far people will go when the official route is effectively blocked. If you make it impossible to reach a human, don’t be shocked when users start treating an AI like customer service — even when it starts talking like a reporter.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is what happens when companies replace support with a maze and then act surprised when people ask a chatbot for help. The real joke is not that ChatGPT gets it wrong; it’s that the system around it has made wrong answers feel useful. There’s a very modern lesson here: if humans are unreachable, the bots start freelancing.
Read more about this at: Simon Willison’s Weblog
