Chatbodies

• Published in: Representations (Berkeley, Calif.) Vol. 168; no. 1; pp. 180 - 201
• Main Author: Yue, Genevieve
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berkeley University of California Press Books Division 01.11.2024
• Subjects: Internet
• ISSN: 0734-6018; 1533-855X
• DOI: 10.1525/rep.2024.168.12.180

The internet is a realm of accelerated forgeries. The 1993 New Yorker cartoon “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” remains as much a description as a promise. The computer interface is a screen in more than one way, concealing the fingers (or paws) that press the keys from the users who read what they write. In 1993, the assumption was that a body was present, human or humanoid. But more recently, another type of nonhuman entity has flooded online spaces. Bots, an abbreviation of robot, are software programs that complete automated tasks, and only sometimes do they pose as human users. According to the Imperva Bad Bot Report, it is estimated that bot traffic comprised 42.3 percent of all internet activity in 2021. This is a variation on what Harun Farocki called operative or phantom images, whereby, in reading automatically generated images, machines interact with other machines