Meet ChatTJB, The New AI Chatbot Where An 'Average Individual' Answers Every Question

Amid the sea of AI chatbots, there's a new one in town. However, there's one big difference – it isn't powered by artificial intelligence, it's powered by an actual human. ChatTJB, created by San Francisco artist and former Google employee Tucker Bryant, looks and works like a typical AI chatbot. But instead of an AI model generating responses, Bryant personally reads and answers every question, Futurism reported. 

The joke becomes clear in the name. On a billboard promoting ChatTJB in San Francisco, the service is described as a chatbot "powered by AI". A small disclaimer at the bottom reveals that here, AI means 'average individual' – Bryant himself.

The project was launched in April as an art experiment and commentary on how heavily people have begun relying on AI for everyday questions. Bryant deliberately designed it to look like a polished AI service while offering a much slower and more ordinary experience. According to the website, "In practice: you ask a question, and a person named Tucker reads it, thinks about it, and writes back when awake and motivated. Everything below is a more verbose way of saying that."

Ask ChatTJB how to cook an egg, what to wear or what to make for dinner, and the answer comes from Bryant. Ask it to create a picture of a rabbit wearing sunglasses, and he may even draw it by hand rather than use an image generator.

ChatTJB describes itself as 'artisanal intelligence handcrafted by a single human being'. Instead of a large language model, it jokingly calls itself a "single-operator large language experience". 

For months, the website remained a small internet curiosity. That changed on July 27, when Bryant spent $6,000 on a billboard in San Francisco to promote the service. Photos of the billboard quickly spread online, sending the number of requests soaring.

Here's the video:

Bryant has reportedly received more than 30,000 questions so far, with traffic at one point reaching around 5,000 requests an hour. The sudden surge left him struggling to respond to everyone, with the website also experiencing heavy traffic, as per New York Post.

The popularity has now pushed Bryant to expand the project. Around 10 volunteers have joined him to help handle the growing number of questions, and he is exploring ways to turn ChatTJB into a larger community-run project.

Bryant says the idea is less about proving that AI is bad and more about making people think about how they use it. He believes people have increasingly started asking AI for advice on things they previously handled themselves, sometimes accepting its answers without enough scepticism or independent thinking.

Once users realised that a real person was answering on the other end, Bryant noticed that the conversations often became more personal and candid. What began as a joke that Bryant expected to disappear has turned into a viral experiment about our growing dependence on AI and, more so, the value of simply asking another person.