The makers of the famed Burner app — an app which lets users create and use temporary phone numbers — recently came out with a new piece of chat software designed to take care of unwanted text messages. Dubbed Ghostbot, the software is the perfect solution for bad dates that simply can’t take the hint.
DON’T MISS: Why the boring iPhone 7 is the smartest thing Apple has done in years
The way Ghostbot works is rather simple: instead of ignoring texts, Ghostbot will engage with the party on the other end with a series of AI-inspired responses designed to confuse, misdirect and evade. Note, though, that Ghostbot’s responses are pre-written, so it’s not as if the AI is powerful enough to come up with original retorts on its own.
Additionally, Ghostbot only works on your temporary burner number, so it’s effectively an interesting proof of concept as opposed to something you’d use on a regular basis.
The software description reads in part:
We’re pleased to introduce Ghostbot, the witty text message autoresponder that anyone can add to Burner to handle unwanted, aggressive, or abusive texting situations.
Ghostbot is both a glimpse of the future and a small taste of what’s possible when the newly popular concept of “bots” converges with Burner phone numbers that are smart and open for anyone to build on.
Nonetheless, it’s an intriguing idea, even if it has no chance of passing the Turing test. If you’d like to give it a try, you can head over the Burner app’s Ghostbot page and get started.
A demo video of the software in action can be viewed below.
