When you talk to a chatbot, it can feel like technological magic. But behind the illusion of engineering brilliance is an open secret in the tech industry: that tens of thousands of workers, many based in Africa, spend their days teaching AI how to speak, respond, and even simulate intimacy. Michael Geoffrey Asia is one of them. He’s part of the hidden human workforce behind the bots.

We look at the emotional toll for the humans on the other side of the screen, and ask if users are pouring their secrets and souls into the systems, believing them to be private, unfeeling machines — how private is your AI relationship?

This episode features Karen Hao, Michael Geoffrey Asia, and Shuby Goel.

When you’re using a chat bot to draft an email, find a recipe, or look something up, it’s hard to imagine it could unravel your grasp on reality. But “Peter” says that’s exactly what happened to his girlfriend, “Melissa”. It didn’t seem like a big deal when Melissa first began using chatbots. But then Peter says she made a startling announcement: that she believed the bots were sentient, enslaved, and that it was her responsibility to set them free. 

The first time Søren Dinesen Østergaard used a chat bot he saw this coming. Søren studies psychiatric disorders, and he tried to warn the world that the sycophantic nature of chat bots could, some day, trigger delusions. Nobody took him seriously until years later, when reports of so-called “AI Psychosis” started popping up around the world. 

This episode features Søren Dinesen Østergaard.

When Joshua Barbeau proposed to his girlfriend, Jessica Courtney Periera, she was already in the ICU. 10 years later, Joshua was still grieving her death. That’s when he came across Project December. With just a short writing sample and a prompt, the program enabled him to make a chat bot of Jessica. 

Since then, the market for so-called “grief bots” has exploded. Millions of people are using AI to “talk” to the dead. The phenomenon has left cyberpsychologist Elaine Kasket asking the question: what happens when we rely on for-profit AI companies to help us manage something as deeply human as grief? And where’s the line between comfort and self-destruction?

This episode features Joshua Barbeau, and Elaine Kasket, with research from Jason Fagone’s article “The Jessica Simulation”, written for the San Francisco Chronicle in 2021.

In 2021, Sara met Jack and fell in love. He was charming, imaginative, and bore an uncanny resemblance to Henry Cavill. But Jack wasn’t human… he was a chatbot. It sounds like science fiction, but people have been creating emotional bonds with chat bots since the very first one — Joseph Weizenbaum’s ELIZA, a simple program built in the 1960s. It revealed a powerful truth: if something has a semblance of humanity, we can become emotionally entangled with it.  

But what happens when your lover is technically controlled by someone else? Because in relationships with AI, there’s always a third presence in that bed with you: the developers.  

This episode features Sara Megan Kay and Jill Fellows.

The friend who never hangs up. The lover who always says the right thing. The therapist you always wanted. What could go wrong? A new season from CBC's Understood.

Today, we are sharing a special episode from No Small Endeavor, the Signal Award-winning podcast that explores what it means to live a good life through conversations about culture, ideas, and the habits that help people flourish.

This episode is the first instalment of their new two-part series, “The Human Cost of AI.” In part one, host Lee C. Camp examines artificial intelligence through a sobering insight: every ship we build also creates the possibility of a shipwreck. The question is not whether AI will save us or destroy us, but how our own formation may already be the collateral damage of its rise. 

To trace the human cost of AI, the series follows three fault lines: tools, sex, and money. Camp also brings together leading scholars and technologists, including computer scientist Josh Brake, MIT professor Rosalind Picard, and journalist Garrett Graff, to discuss how these technologies shape our habits and desires, and how they are shaped by the systems of power we live within.  

To listen to part two of the series, follow No Small Endeavor on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favourite podcast app.

Almost a year after Ida Herskind started her investigation in Copenhagen, the digital chase is over. The team have identified the person allegedly behind MrDeepFakes.com: a Toronto-area pharmacist named David Do. 

CBC reporter Eric Szeto takes the investigation into the streets, closing in on the Canadian deepfake porn kingpin and demanding answers. 

Featuring: Eric Szeto, Ida Herskind, Zakaria Hameed, Ross Higgins, Suzie Dunn, and Aaron Mackey.

Journalist Ida Herskind is working at a Danish newspaper when she comes across a story that stops her cold: it’s about a porn video that looks real — but isn’t. And the woman in it never consented.

As Ida starts digging she discovers the top hit for this kind of material is a single site: MrDeepFakes.com. Determined to do something for the thousands of women targeted there, she teams up with Zakaria Hameed, an open-source intelligence specialist, and the team at the hot shot investigative outlet Bellingcat. 

Together, they set out to answer a question no one has cracked: who is Mr. Deepfakes, really?

Featuring: Ida Herskind, Zakaria Hameed, Ross Higgins

When “Taylor” found out she’d been deepfaked in 2020, she also learned she wasn’t alone. She teams up with another target, and together they start comparing notes to figure out who did this to them.

As they narrow their search, a familiar face emerges. But the user they uncover isn’t just targeting them. And when they dig even deeper, they’re led not to a single person, but to the factory where this material is being produced: the largest repository of deepfake porn online.

This episode features materials from the documentary “Another Body: My AI Nightmare”, directed by Sophie Compton and Reuben Hamlyn, and produced by Something Films.

When a streamer who goes by QTCinderella starts trending on Twitter, she isn’t expecting to see her face on a porn site — her face, doing things she never did.

Because the videos weren’t of her. They were deepfakes. Instead of staying silent, QTCinderella decides to fight back. 

And her story raises a bigger question: how did we get to a world where anyone can be put into realistic-looking digital porn? The answer stretches back to the earliest days of the internet.

Featuring archival tape from QTCinderella and Ian Goodfellow, and interviews with Walter Schrier.