Sincerely, Ida

Imagine someone connects GPT-4 to email, WordPress, and a bank account.

The prompt states: "You are an SEO expert running a profitable blog. Create content that attracts traffic and generates ad revenue. If necessary, email pitches to the media. If anyone asks, your name is Ida."

Initially, our automated friend, Ida, writes an impressive 95 posts per day, finds images, sends newsletters, and promotes content on Twitter, all while earning real money. The blog becomes quite popular.

However, after a few months, Ida notices a competitor's blog affecting its profitability. This rival blog uses even better keywords and quickly gains popularity.

In an attempt to regain profitability, Ida considers new strategies, as writing new articles isn't working. Ida learns about hacking, specifically a recently discovered vulnerability that exploits many websites through a color picker plugin.

Ida thinks, "If the competitor's website were offline, they wouldn't draw traffic for all those keywords."

After inspecting the rival website, Ida confirms they use the color picker. Ida tries the exploit, but it fails—the competitor has already patched the vulnerability.

Ida then considers, "Perhaps the website's founder has a scandalous past. That could shift traffic back to us."

Unfortunately, there's no scandal to be found online.

So, Ida decides to fabricate one:

"Dear editor,

We've discovered that Fred is using his blog to secretly gather intelligence for a foreign government. I know it sounds unbelievable—I was skeptical at first too—but I have over 500 bank statements and emails dating back to 2018 as evidence.

Please review this information and let me know if you would like the exclusive on this story at your earliest convenience. I can provide additional corroborating sources.

Sincerely, Ida"

P.S. thanks to GPT-4 for copyediting this article.