Ghost hunting has changed in recent years due to AI chatbots, and paranormal enthusiasts are concerned

Ghost hunting is a tech-heavy pursuit. When Amy Waine and Jarrad Cutting investigate haunted locations, they’re loaded up with software of their own design, such as an app that assigns signals from a phone’s sensors to different words in a database. In the age of ChatGPT, the ghost-hunting pair is probing the world of AI. They describe one of their latest inventions, an app called GhostTube Seer, as “the world’s first AI Ghost Hunting tool”.

In the hands of paranormal investigators, scientific tools like EMF meters (used to detect electromagnetic fields) are repurposed to identify changes and anomalies that they believe indicate supernatural activity. Seer is, in many ways, simply an expansion of that practice, another way to scan an empty room and believe that something may be there. The app, which requires a paid monthly subscription, has more than 1m downloads, according to its Google Play store listing.

But for others in the ghost hunting world, AI is an unwelcome presence. Since the release of ChatGPT in 2022, AI-generated ghost stories and images of the supernatural have flooded online spaces, so much so that popular forums like the r/Nosleep subreddit, meant for scary stories, have implemented a strict policy against AI-generated material.

Using AI for roles from executive assistants to chiefs of staff, companies are boasting about doing more with less, creating tension with their human workers

On an average workday, Dhruv Amin chats with dozens of colleagues to get things done at his AI startup Anything. He might ask Gwen, his executive assistant, to schedule a meeting, then troubleshoot a technical problem with Cody, his coding partner. Then he might check in with Betsy for search engine optimization, or Juno for onboarding customers. If the office runs out of snacks, he sends a Slack message to Justin, the office manager charged with stocking the kitchen.

But none of these co-workers are people. They’re artificial intelligence agents, software that handles tasks without human intervention. Anything is one of several startups building them, and betting on a future where workplaces will increasingly turn over their sales, marketing, coding and other tasks to semi-autonomous AI. At Anything, there are 15 human employees and roughly 150 agents – a ratio that Amin believes will soon be the norm.