Monstober 2025

A.I.

What's short for artificial intelligence. 

You never understood it to be honest. Sure some people would have a 'Siral' or 'Alex' assistant and you knew people who had it in their homes to turn on their lights or in their cars to check traffic or weather or use a GPS or to make calls- You never had one of felt the need to get one. Not because you disliked them but because you felt no use for it. You could easily just look up the info you needed on Boogle and turn off your own house lights or make your own calls. 

However Ai art and writing you thought was absolutely dumb. Why generate art when you could just do it yourself or hire an actual artist to do it? Same went for writing. You never understood the laziness of it. It took actual jobs away from actual people but you had no say in what other people did. However your friend was telling you about this new ai trend recently.

"AI chat bots?" You stared at her confused.

However your friend only simply nodded with a huge smile. "Yeah! You can essentially talk to an ai version of your favorite characters from different franchises! You can even get a call from them sometimes! "

The two of you had just been sitting down in a restaurant eating burgers and just generally catching up. It wasn't until that you casually mentioned liking the villain of a new show you were watching did your friend bring up the idea of this AI boy chat stuff.

"But.. you're not talking to them. You're talking to a boy someone programmed. That's pretty weird and creepy if you think about it." You pointed out.

At this she scrunched up her face. "No it's not! It's FUN!!" She insisted. "I talk to Rengoku all the time!" She smiled widely. "It's like he never died in the series-"

"Uh. Firstly, yes it IS." You crossed your arms now looking at her. "Secondly again it's not a real person. It's a ROBOT!! And thirdly why would you do that when you could just pay a legitimately voice actor on Viewtube who makes those favorite characters x the audience stuff?? They can not only do a real voice but it's good to support content creators!"

"Because it's not always convenient for people," she said bluntly waving a hand. "Besides, you have to wait to get them to do that. Why wait for them to get their voice in gear when I can just chat online whenever I want?"

"Because it's creepy."

"It's NOT creepy!,' your friend shouted rather loudly making a few people look over at your table.

You sighed. "Ok. We'll agree to disagree because obviously neither of us are gonna change our minds. It's creepy to me and it's not creepy to you. How's that?" 

She still scowled at you before an idea popped into her mind. "How can you say that when you haven't even tried it? Give it a chance."

"No thanks."

"How about this! Try it out for one week " she held up her hands quickly as you opened your mouth. "Just one week. If you still don't like it then I'll admit it's creepy."

...You slowly closed your mouth humming in thought. "...Deal . But then you have to pay a voice actor for something in return. If I have to try your want then you have to try mine."

She frowned but then groaned and rolled her eyes. "Fine. But only because I know you won't drop it."

So you had her help you set up your own temporary account(you were planning on deleting it right after the week was up-) on a sight called Anichat, which was a website for specifically chatting with ai anime characters, and she showed you how to select a boy to chat, the search bar, and the help guide which includes one line in particular.

'Pleass know that Anichat AI is merely programmed responses based on the replies you send and no live person is responsible for their responses. All responses from our bots are completely fictional without any real standing on the happenings of the outside world.'

That was quite a disclaimer and a weird feeling came over you when you read it but you still moved on as your friend instructed you to where you needed to go. 

"Ok. Now you can pick a few characters to chat with-"

"Just one. One bot for one voice actor. I'm going to just delete my account anyways even if I change my mind on this, which I'm not."

You friend friend frowned but pushed on ahead. "Right. Anyways just pick a random AI profile then and then it'll be just like texting."

"... That's it?" You asked looking at her and she nodded. Oh. Ok. Seems simple enough.

"You can also delete your conversations to completely start over the experience but that completely restarts the bot. You can also leave reviews or follow the link on the top right there to send messages to the creators if there's any bugs."

"Oh. Ok. Which one do I pick?"

She shrugged. You can look for an anime character you really like using the search bar but you can also just picked one of the ones on the home page. They always display the new ones there."

You stared at your phone and the many different profile pictures and names. It was like scrolling through the contact info on your phone. Simple but you didn't care. Probably should just pick a random one from the list since you weren't really planning on having it for longer than the agreed time. Until you saw one picture that caught your eye. There was only one profile picture you recognized and it was because it was a character from the anime Demon Slayer you had currently finished binging. Obanai he was called you remembered correctly. Eh. Why not? It's not like you'd be texting this app a lot anyways. So you pressed on his profile and looked at the blank text convo.

"So what now?"

"Just text it anything. It'll give a generated response based on what you say."

Ok. Seems simple enough. You decided to just text a simply answer.

Y/n: Hi

You then sat there and waited for a response. And waited more as your friend looked over your shoulder to look at your screen..... Before you both looked at each other. 

"Maybe the creator has it under maintenance?"

"Whatever. I already sent a message. I'm not going to be choosing another one if I'm going to just delete my account later."

That was that you supposed. Despite your friend not being enthusiastic by your lack of enthusiasm but you meant it. One bot for one week in exchange for her supporting one voice actor. You didn't have to wait too long for a response because in the second day of having the dumb account you had gotten a notification. It was actually in the middle of your lunch break in the break room. You had been eating a sandwich and your phone gave a buzz. Curious you opened up the app and to your surprise saw you had finally gotten a message back.

Obanai: Who is this? Mitsuri?!

You kinda chuckled at it. Whoever programmed it at least got Obanai's love for Mitsuri right. Did you really want to entertain this thing though? No but you promised your friend so you just sent back a reply.

Y/n: Nah. I'm a magical wizard from Mars who casts fireball and lives in a castle made of cheese only to lure young children to eat so I can use the freshest of dank memes to fuel my groovy powers. Also I can talk to potatoes and i have a pet rock named Yolo.

You were chuckling to yourself trying not to laugh out loud as you typed in your reply. You'd like to mess with this thing if it was going to be buggy about it. For the longest time you didn't get a reply back making you shrug and continue to eat your lunch. If it was going to take another whole day to reply again then you wouldn't bother talking back to eat. Another ping made you look back at it.

Obanai: What the fuck have you been drinking???

Oh you were gonna have fun.

Y/n: Your tears.

Obanai: Is this some kind of dam prank?! 

Y/n: Yep.

Obanai: What the actual hell is wrong with you?! Who even is this?!

Y/n: Joe

Obanai: Joe who?

Y/n: JOE MAMA!!

You were trying hard not to laugh at the ridiculousness of this actually but it was hard. It was stupid and childish but so was talking to a bot about anything. Again there wasn't a reply for a while until there was one.

Obanai: ARE YOU DRUNK RIGHT NOW?! IS THIS TENGEN?! DID SOMEONE FUCKING PUT YOU UP TO THIS?!

Well someone was cranky.

Y/n: Calm down, Snake boy. I literally just wanted to mess with you. Nah. I'm just a random person.

Obanai: I don't find your stupid sense of humor amusing.

You snickered still. This was at least amusing. But you decided that was enough for today and just turned off your phone to finish your lunch and then go back to work. In fact you'd completely forgotten about it even as you went home and fell asleep before waking up to a new message the very next morning. You had gotten another ping and groggily went to go see what it was.

Obanai: Where am I?

You were confused. What did the bot mean by that? But maybe it was a programmed response after a while. 

Y/n: Don't you live in Japan?

Obanai: I'm not there! Where is here?!

You were a little bit more confused now. Was it playing a scenario involving the infinity castle??

Y/n: Are you maybe in Muzan's domain?

Obanai: NO! ThErES NoONE elSE HERe!!

You stared at the phone. Confused about the response and a little bit creeped out by the wording of it but you guessed this must've been some bug or something. Whatever. You had more important things to worry about than a stupid robot. You just decided to ignore the pings it gave you for the rest of the day and focused only on your work and getting through the day. You didn't even look at it the next day despite getting a few pings. You only had three more days of this try out anyways so you'd ignore it one more more day and answer it tomorrow. On the sixth day you bothered to finally see what the bot write. And froze upon reading what it said.

Obanai: THerE's noTHINg but NUMBERS

Obanai: Am I ReaL?#$#

Obanai: ARe yOu real?+?

Obanai: I. CaNT.-6_7brEATh

Obanai: DONT IGnORe Me!!

Obanai: I aM AiLiVE!!

A sinking feeling sank your stomach and made your guts churn. Goosebumps ran down your skin as you say there staring at your phone. What..kind of response is this?

"Ok. Time to delete this conversation."

You did as your friend instructed going up and completely deleting the conversation. She said that would reset the bot right? As you waited the loading circle eventually disappeared and the conversation was back to being blank again.  There. That ought to do it. You wanted to just delete the entire all together since it freaked you out but you just had one more day to get through. Besides it just must've been a weird bug or something. ...Just in case however you completely ignored your phone the last day. Leaving your phone at home and even ignoring it when you got home despite feeling antsy about the entire thing. ....Oh what the heck. It was near sundown anyways so you figured it was a good enough time as any to delete the stupid app and forget this stupid bet ever happened. You picked up your phone opening it and completely froze reading the single message it sent you.

Obanai: Y/N#'-&(anW5&_sER...M7467E!!

How the HELL did that thing know your name?! Did it see it from the screen? But you thought that it was only supposed to respond to your replies and you never told it your name! A shiver ran down your spine. 

"Ok. Screw this. I'm done."

Again you deleted the conversation effectively deleting the message from it before heading towards the creator's page and leaving them a message on their profile. 

Y/n: Hey. You need to look at your Obanai bot over there. It keeps sending me really creepy messages and acting really buggy. 

You didn't bother waiting to see if they would reply back to you or not. You simply went to your profile page and confirmed the deactivation of it. Only after also deleting the app off your phone did you feel relieved entirely. 

"So what did you think?"

Your friend had excitedly asked you when you met back up a few days later. Her enthusiasm depleting as you stared her dead in the eyes.

"You couldn't fucking pay me to talk to that thing again!"