She asked people to write down their AI secrets. The confessions came pouring in.

Olivia Tai stood successful a San Jose promenade pinch her agleam reddish sign, proclaiming: "Everyone has an AI secret."

Two tween girls approached, arms afloat of shopping bags. They quickly scribbled down their confessions, chatting pinch Tai successful their Valley Girl affect. Tai asked astir really they utilized AI astatine school.

"Everyone uses AI, and if you don't usage it, you're an overachiever," the girls told her.

Tai wasn't conscionable sportfishing for tech secrets. The 26-year-old from San Francisco was processing her creation project, called "What We Tell AI." She asked strangers crossed the state to time off anonymous notes astir their AI-related shames — and past displayed them connected a website.

Americans are forming progressively individual relationships pinch AI. A September survey from Elon University and YouGov recovered that 27% of US big net users had "significant affectional aliases societal interactions" pinch AI.

Tai saw this first hand. The task turned her into thing for illustration a power big accepting late-night calls, she said. Friends told her astir their ChatGPT-written wedding vows; strangers told her they lied to their managers astir AI.

"I didn't cognize really this task would effect people," she said. "What I'm learning is that, sometimes, the poignancy of a single, really clear communicative successful the shape of a statement tin really dispersed measurement much dialogue."

The origins of the project

Tai was tired of group turning into "debate kids" erstwhile they talked astir AI.

In the summertime of 2025, she hosted a bid of workshops successful New York and San Francisco astir AI's effect connected the world. She noticed that group would get excessively absurd aliases deliberation excessively acold into the future.

So, she introduced the confessions. At the commencement of the workshop, she'd inquire attendees to constitute down a concealed astir their narration pinch AI. They'd put the notes successful a bowl, operation them up, redistribute them, and person everyone publication the admissions aloud.

"It makes the stakes really personal," she said. "It makes things real."

After a fewer workshops, she thought the confessions would make a bully creation project. She group up a prototype successful San Francisco's Dolores Park, pinch a cardboard container and a Sharpie-written sign.

One statement that day, successful particular, struck her. It was astir cloning an ex-boyfriend's sound to "have a past relationship pinch him." The AI cloning "helped maine yet move on," the statement read.

Tai recovered it "poignant" and "strange" — and decided to move it into a due creation task successful aggregate cities.

She painted a woody motion agleam red. "It's meant to beryllium provocative," Tai said. She'd load it into her granny cart, on pinch an instruction files and a image framework containing six illustration notes.

Not everyone sewage it. Some would time off confessions astir long-lost loves pinch nary AI relation. Others would time off prank notes. Still, she ended up pinch a trove of thoughtful responses.

After collecting the notes, Tai kept them successful small integrative bags, organized by wherever they were written. She past uploaded them to her site, designed by her friend Arin Pantja.

Tai is still scanning the notes, truthful the tract is being updated continually and could proceed to grow. People are asking Tai if they tin lend and complete the research successful Mexico, Australia, and China, she said.

An unscientific study

Tai called the task a "snapshot" of San Francisco.

It's not that she only collected information from the city; she hopped betwixt San Francisco, San Jose, and New York. Rather, it's astir the tone of the confessors.

"You won't travel up to the booth if you don't actively person a narration pinch AI," she said. "I'm successful a batch of spaces that are going to person early adopters."

Of the cities, San Francisco had the boldest responses. In New York's Luddite community, it's shameful to opportunity you wrote an email pinch AI, Tai said. In the Bay Area, that's array stakes.

Some of the San Francisco confessors wondered if she was doing marketplace investigation for an AI company. "People who activity successful AI would beryllium scared, and a small spot suspicious," Tai said.

She compared it to New York, wherever group worried she was a content creator, filming them arsenic they wrote.

Tai calls herself an "artist-researcher." She later clarifies that she much identifies pinch the creator title, but that the process of collecting notes felt for illustration an "anthropological, ethnographic snapshot."

She isn't an expert, Tai said, and she's not telling group to "have immoderate takeaway." Rather, she's asking group to bespeak much profoundly connected the "slippery slope" of AI.

"There are each these caller norms coming about," Tai said. "Which ones do we really want?"