This is the future AI companies want
Once I’ve gotten out of bed, I pick out some clothes. My Virtual On™ Smart Mirror tries to show trendy outfits I can make from my closet. I dismiss it, It’s thursday, it’s the same old pants and dress shirt. Today feels like a green day, so I get a mild green striped shirt and head to the bathroom. The Virtual On™ tries to show me what I would look like with it on, as if I don’t know, but I pause it and give it a few seconds anyway, probably because it has a cute face up top and I’ve started anthropomorphizing it. In the bathroom, my Numi™ smart toilet gives me some uncomfortable compliments about my bowel health and offers to play a celebration song. I’m not interested, why does this have built in speakers anyway? I grope around trying to shut it up, but accidentally flush instead. So much for its smart water saving features. At the sink, I look around for my toothbrush. I forgot to charge my Oral-B GeniusX AI toothbrush, so I just pick up a manual one. There’s another AI smart mirror in here, but my wifi doesn’t reach the bathroom so it just shows me the time and some error symbols. Technology man, I swear. At least my Nest™ thermostat’s AI had the house at a good temperature when I woke up. And I barely noticed my Blindr™ AI blinds opening when my alarm rang. I did notice the second alarm though, since Blindr™ doesn’t work with the stock alarm app, I have to also run their own alarm. I don’t use it as my default because my phone will randomly decide to battery optimize and it will stop working for a couple of days – as will the blinds – until I allow it through again. Too unreliable. Oh well.
I saunter down to my kitchen, feeling moody. My AI enhanced Linova™ coffee machine has just finished its predicted coffee for this morning (cappuccino, as always). I grab the cup then head over to my 2024 Bespoke 4-Door Flex Refrigerator with AI Family Hub Plus™ which excitedly tells me of all the healthy breakfasts I can make with the food in there (I will be having plain cereal, as usual). From the corner, my Alexa enabled smart speaker summarizes the news for the day. I don’t really pay attention, all the news sounds the same since I started having AI summarize it for me (well to be fair I didn’t start it, the company just pushed an update that played it every morning and I accepted it; heaven knows what publishers it rips off). I fill my bowl and place it in the microwave, then step back so I can tell Alexa to warm up my milk. It gets the time completely wrong, so I go back and punch it in manually.
I sit down with my cereal and pull out my phone. Aside from the usual spam emails (likely all AI written), engagement notifications from my social media (not AI, but may as well be) and mobile games, countless work emails (with AI generated summary), AI dream journal asking me to record my dreams (too late for that lmao), there’s also a morning text from my mother. I open up Whatsapp to text her back, where MetaAI™ offers to draft me a response. For a good morning text? I tap the button in bored curiosity.
Awaken, dear comrade of the cosmos, to the radiant embrace of dawn’s ethereal kiss. Weird as hell, but maybe my mother will appreciate it. I hit send and start scrolling through my feed… too much AI generated gunk here. I try to go to my subscribed feed, before realizing Meta removed it in the last update. Why do I still use this shitty app? Probably because all my friends are on it. Bah. I shut it down and open up TikTok instead. That annoying AI voice is still everywhere, but at least it’s real people in the frame. I think. The TikTok ShopAI keeps trying to sell me misidentified products (doesn’t help that many creators now try to fool it as a joke) and it feels like every other video is an ad, but god damn this feed hits harder than cocaine. Er, probably – I haven’t actually tried cocaine, but Breaking Bad was a pretty good show. I think. I haven’t actually watched the whole thing, mostly just shorts of random scenes and way too many memes. After about 40 minutes of scrolling, I notice the time and realize the algorithm has stolen my morning again. Damn it. I yell at Alexa to shut up (somehow it understands) and to turn off my smart bulbs (misunderstands this one, I’ll just have to do it from my phone later) and rush to the car.
As I pull out of my driveway, I notice my Irrigreen™ smart sprinklers are on again. Either it didn’t rain enough last night or they’re malfunctioning. Across the street, my GenX neighbour Dave is still watering manually with a hose. Good for him getting some movement at his age I guess, though I can’t imagine how he has the time. Soon, my car’s Affectiva™ AI fatigue monitoring system berates me for driving without being fully alert. Yeah ok buddy, what am I supposed to do if I had a bad night, take a bus? I don’t live in Thailand or something or wherever they have decent public transport, I have no idea. Maybe the Car’s self-driving can help. I try activating it. As usual, it works, but not quite well enough to take my focus away from driving. Not sure that legal that is anyway. My phone dings - it’s my mom, with a confused question about where I got that quote from. Oh mom… I dictate a response with Bixby™ and then start a podcast about true cybercrime or something. I have no idea why I listen to this. Literally, actually, because I’m bored out of mind after hearing about the interviewee’s personal life for 15 minutes. I try to use my SnipCast™ AI podcast summarizer but stop before I almost get into an accident. Instead, I start some music and start judging the people around me for being on their phones instead. Spotify starts its AI DJ; I still haven’t figured out how it’s different from just its auto playlists, but oh well, I can’t turn it off without being a hypocrite about judging others. As I’m pulling into my parking lot my FitnessAI™ on my smartwatch buzzes to tell me I’ve been sitting for too long and should move about. Oh, you don’t say, you dunce.
Finally in my office, I pull out my laptop and accidentally hit the Copilot™ key while trying to open my browser. It immediately springs from the side, eager to help me with… something. I don’t care, and I’m annoyed enough that I press the AI button on my Logitech mouse, dismiss the LogiAI™ prompt builder so I can ask it how to disable Copilot for good. I probably could ask Copilot instead, but I’m just doing this out of spite. It doesn’t know and does a web search instead, which naturally opens up Bing in Edge, leading to Copilot answering my question after all. Ironic. Except of course it doesn’t give a straight answer, because why would describe the method for its own destruction (it’s not sentient, Microsoft probably just trained to not answer this quest. Probably). So instead I open my preferred browser, Brave. It seems it got a new update and re-enabled its own Leo AI™ so I tell it to shut up and direct me to Google instead. Leo fails, of course, because it’s not interactive, just chat. Finally I get Google’s Gemini™ 2.0 Ultra open and ask it how to disable Copilot. Enough of bad AI, I want good AI. Just kidding, Gemini is also pretty bad, as I learn after its proposed fix completely fails to work. It’s probably just an outdated solution. Whatever. I pinch my Nothing ear™ and ask it’s NoAI to play some calmer music. Except of course it doesn’t integrate with Spotify and tries to open its own music app instead. Damn it. I pull out my phone to change the track manually.
It’s 1 pm. I’ve successfully ignored my FitnessAI™ recommendations for a healthy salad and gotten a burger instead. I’m in a meeting. Zoom, because my boss is working from home, even though he made us come in to the office. Boss boy doesn’t like us eating in meetings so I try to be inconspicous. On screen is AI generated subway surfers gameplay so the Zoom emotion AI doesn’t flag me for not paying attention. Zoom actually has this built in, but it tattles to your boss
Disclaimer: all named products mentioned are real, but the author has taken creative liberties regarding their functionality or lack thereof.
Unnamed products are probably real too, I just didn’t find a specific product to slander.
Disclaimer 2: No part of this story was generated with AI, unless explicitly indicated
Disclaimer 3: if any of the grammar bothers you… that may be intentional.