A San Francisco chatbot called ChatTJB has drawn thousands of queries, but it contains no artificial intelligence, no algorithm, and no large language model. Instead, it is powered by one former Google employee and roughly 10,000 volunteers who type responses by hand, according to Fortune.
The project began as a billboard advertisement in San Francisco, and it quickly attracted attention. Fortune reports that the billboard generated about 5,000 queries per hour, a figure also cited by SFGATE. The flood of submissions was so heavy that the ex-Google employee behind it was overwhelmed, according to SFist.
Futurism spoke with the creator, who confirmed that every reply is manually crafted by a human. The volunteers work behind the scenes to answer people one by one, making the entire operation a deliberate counterpoint to the automated chatbots that dominate the market. The billboard itself has become a local favorite, with Gazetteer SF noting that residents actually like it, a rare reaction for public advertising.
The novelty lies in the contrast: while most chatbots rely on machine learning and vast computing power, ChatTJB depends on human effort and coordination. The creator has not disclosed how long he can sustain the project or whether the volunteer pool will grow. What started as a prank, as SFGATE described it, has turned into a working service that handles a high volume of messages in real time.
What to watch next: whether ChatTJB can keep up with demand as more people discover the human-powered bot, and if the model inspires similar stunts in other cities.
