An artist built a tool that makes ChatGPT run painfully slow and says it is designed to break people's dependence on AI

If you’re concerned about your AI usage, then one artist may have come up with a solution with an online tool that’ll make your chatbot move at a snail’s pace.

Over the last couple of years, hundreds of millions of people across the world have started using chatbots. 

The handy little bots can be used for a bunch of different things, from helping you choose where to go on holiday to servicing your car; some people have even started falling in love with them. 

But if you’ve got concerns that you, or a loved one, might be a little bit too reliant on your AI assistant, then Slow LLM could be what you’re looking for. 

Enter our competition to win a stunning 2006 Ford GT or $400,000 cash!

Slow LLM is an online tool that’ll make using your AI chatbot very frustrating

While the demand for AI is clearly going nowhere, there are some studies that make for concerning reading. 

One study from last year found that people who regularly rely on AI ‘developed shallower knowledge’ of a topic than those who didn’t.

Meanwhile, a recent study found that rather than making our work life easier, AI is actually making people work more than ever, and another found that workers were experiencing ‘brain fry’ caused by AI. 

If any of that has given you pause for thought, and you’re hoping to cut back on AI or help a loved one cut back, then Slow LLM is here to help. 

The online tool was created by artist Sam Lavigne and works by simply slowing down AI chatbots, like ChatGPT, to a frustrating degree. 

“Are you concerned that you or your loved ones might be participating in a massive de-skilling event? Experiencing LLM-induced psychosis? Outsourcing cognitive and emotional functions to autocomplete? Install SLOW LLM on your computer, or the computer of a loved one, today,” Slow LLM’s website explains. 

The tool works by manipulating the chatbot’s JavaScript to rewrite the ‘Fetch’ function, so when you visit a chatbot website and ask it a question, the new, modified Fetch function kicks in and really drags out the response time.

Its creator thinks it could cause people to ‘rage quit’ chatbots

Slow LLM works with ChatGPT and Claude and can be installed directly onto Chrome. 

There’s also an ‘Enterprise Edition’ that means it can be installed across an entire network, at a university, school, workplace, or even your house. 

Creator Lavigne told 404 Media that he came up with the idea after noticing how much some of his students were relying on artificial intelligence to carry out seemingly simple tasks, and becoming concerned that they could end up ‘forgetting’ basic things they have learned.

The artist went on to say that he hadn’t implemented the tool on any unwitting subjects, but admitted to being interested in finding out how it might go. 

“Maybe they’ll just rage-quit LLMs,” he told the publication. 

And, after seeing the tool in action, we reckon he might be right.

DISCOVER SBX CARS: The global premium car auction platform powered by Supercar Blondie