If you're anything like us, the first thing you'll want to do when planning your dream vacation is check out the local restaurants. For those who like to step out the confines of an all-inclusive, nearby restaurants can be make or break for booking a hotel.
Whether it be Yelp, Foursquare, Tripadvisor, or any of the other review sites, hungry foodies flock to online reviews to make sure the nearby cuisine is up to scratch.
So, just imagine your dismay when you go to make reservations at the best restaurant in town...only to realize it doesn't even exist.
If you're in the Austin, Texas, you might when to check out Ethos. A quick scan of its Instagram shows off plenty of delicious-looking food, while it's own website looks equally impressive. However, if you fancy tucking into Ethos' melt-in-your-mouth Chimichurri Burger while trying to save room for its Beekeeper’s Lemon Lavender Cheesecake, you're fresh out of luck.
It's not because Ethos is fully-booked, but instead, it simply doesn't exist. Despite its socials being up and running for over a year, Ethos is nothing more than an experiment in Artificial Intelligence. Although some Michelin chef could likely whip up its dishes, none of them actually exist.
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Despite the restaurant's website saying General Manager Giuseppe Fusilli (the clue was in the name AND the working hours) saying he's available 24/7, he's little more than a chatbot.
When news of Ethos spilled over onto Reddit, foodies were hungry and disgruntled in equal measure. Notably, there were plenty of comments saying Ethos' mythical status backs up the 'dead internet theory.'
For those who don't know, the dead internet theory suggests the world wide web is now mainly made up of bots and different AI softwares conversing with each other.
These bots are apparently used to sway actual human behavior while limiting our interactions, putting the 'death' date of the internet somewhere between 2016 and 2017. There are obvious naysayers against the dead internet theory, but when fake restaurants can have us fighting over fictional reservations while salivating over our keyboards, it starts to stack up.
Even the thousands of likes might not be what they seem, with someone on Reddit writing: "The 'thousands of likes' are coming from bot farms that are available for purchase."
Warning us that things could be about to get even worse, someone else added, "Don't be surprised to see this kind of restaurant profile for hundreds of thousands of cities in each country. I recently saw YouTube channel posting videos about cities in my region.
"Each one was AI generated with mix of some real photos, real videos, information from wikipedia, AI generated voiceover etc. Quality was low, only few hundred of VV on each video but what if you can create 100000 videos like that every day... ?"
We were always taught not to trust strangers online, but damn, now we can't trust restaurants either.
Despite some restaurants trying to curry favor with fake positive reviews being one thing, at least you could go to those eateries and actually try them out for yourselves.
If you're in the Austin area, fear not because there are plenty of popular eateries that are very much the real deal and will very much accept your real currency.