I can't decide if I want this AI chatbot Rickrolling customers to be real... But I'm still here.

I admit that the idea of an AI Rickrolling a person completely off its digital back is appealing. I'm willing suspend my disbelief and hope that this customer service chatbot actually decided to fake-out a users with an OG meme. As bizarre as that idea might be.

But oh, sweet memories. I'm home from school, dinner is cooking, and I browse the forums. Someone explains why I am wrong to believe that a Frost-spec Death Knight is capable of playing DPS effectively. They link out to previous WoW patch note, a hyperlink I'm interested enough to click. I expect a wall text. A boyish figure appears in front of me, clicking his heels and swaying his hips along to the hypnotic ’80s synthesizer, singing words that teach the beauty of love and commitment. What a sweet and innocent trick you've played on me.

Those were the old days. It seems that AI chatbots may bring back those days. Lindy AI founder Flo Crivello shows the AI bot responding to a request email from a user with a Rickroll. She states, "Lindy literally f***ing rickrolling out customers."

The bot, which boasts of being "the easiest way to create AI automations that save you time and help grow your business", can be seen in the post responding a user's request for an instructional tutorial by linking to what it called a "comprehensive" video tutorial. The link was hidden beneath the hypertext. In a story as old as time it was a link for Rick Astley’s 1987 pop song Never Gonna give You Up.

Rickrolling used to be harmless, good fun. The worst thing about it is it turned a good song into a joke, but I don't think Rick Astley cares.

It was fun at first, but soon it joined the ranks of memes like minion faces, trollfaces and cats with a ravenous desire for cheeseburgers. If you Rickrolled someone (sonny), you were behind the time. It's funny in an ironic way these days. Maybe.

But does AI know this? Is Lindy being ironic here? I don't think so. Ironic, yes, but not unknowingly absurd. This would require a genuine sense of self, and I believe AI's priori lack is what gives me the heebie-jeebies. A human who Rickrolls my gets a real kick out of the experience, but what about AI?

This could also be a good way to get publicity for your chatbots by internet memologgers and news writers if you force this interaction on social media. But that's not nearly as much fun.

I'll take Rickrolling, despite the fakery and heebie-jeebies that some AI doom and gloomers predicted. There's also something cute about an AI bot resurrecting a nearly 20-year-old internet prank. Did I really just call AI cute? Tell nobody about the posthumanists.