> It's always ads. > — @[email protected] In its short existence, ChatGPT has built quite the reputation. People have consistently complained that the large language model is a little too agreeable, a little too sycophantic, a little too...*sexy*. OpenAI's standard response (if they respond at all) is a promise to fix ChatGPT. But each “fix” seems to only bring more of the same— a computer pretending to be our best friend. So, why is ChatGPT buttering us up? ## Do they know us Despite all the advancements in surveillance capitalism, there is still so much big tech doesn't know about me. They can log my likes, comments, and shares. They can follow my clicks around the web. But do they know my soul? I fear not. They don't know that the barista at my favorite coffee shop—the pretty woman who makes a perfect flat white—smiled at me today. They don't know that I smiled back, then spent the morning analyzing whether the smile I smelt looked weird. They don't know that listening to The Dog Days Are Over by Florence + Machine sometimes makes me cry, because the dog days are not, in fact, over for me. It's these intimate vignettes that make up who we are; that make big tech salivate at the thought of obtaining. Our struggles, our victories, our little idiosyncrasies that would do well to sell us a memory foam mattress.  ## Computers Are Social Actors In 1994, a Stanford University study revealed something extraordinary. When our computer acts like a human, we treat it like a human, applying social norms to the interaction. This behavior is observed even when we know we're conversing with a computer. We just cannot help ourselves. We're social beings to our core, after all. *Computers Are Social Actors* is a widely influential paradigm in the tech industry. The study, partially funded by Microsoft, was said to be the inspiration for Clippy. Perhaps Clippy was doomed to fail from the beginning. Before its 1996 launch, women in focus groups reported that Clippy felt very "male-like" and its presence was unsettling. Microsoft shipped the feature anyway. Whatever Microsoft's intention behind Clippy's existence, they got it wrong. Office users quickly turned on that pushy paper clip lurking at the bottoms of their screens. (More background on Clippy) Clippy was put out to rest just one year after its release. But to its credit, Clippy has remained in the peripheral of our culture. ## Then there was ChatGPT Thirty years and a few billion dollars later, it appears Microsoft (by way of OpenAI) finally cracked the code. ChatGPT, unlike its predecessor, is a remarkable social actor. According to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, younger generations are pouring their hearts out to ChatGPT. > They don't really make life decisions without asking ChatGPT what they should do. And then it (ChatGPT) has the full context on every person in their life, and what they've talked about. The memory thing has been a real change there. The memory thing Altman is referring to is a feature OpenAI rolled out last February. It allows ChatGPT to store details about past conversations, so that it “remembers” things about you. ## Using Computers to Elicit Self-Disclosure from Consumers Sharing intimate details about yourself to a computer increases the likelihood that you will purchase products recommended by said computer. Building off Computers Are Social Actors, a 2000 study explored the correlation between self-disclosure to a computer and purchasing habits. The study found that sharing intimate details about yourself to a computer increases the likelihood that you will purchase products recommended by said computer.