Man Pretends to Hallucinate in Job Interview With an AI Bot, Causing It to Go Haywire

Apply for just about any office job these days, and there’s a pretty good chance your first round interview won’t be with a human, but with a crummy virtual AI avatar.

Though the practice has become widespread throughout HR departments around the world, a new video released by satirical influencer Graham Zip shows just how humiliating the experience can be — and how straying from the system’s comfort zone can cause the bots to melt down completely.

On logging into the interview, Graham is welcomed by a virtual avatar of a woman identified as “Dana Whitfield,” which prompts the interviewee to “tell me about yourself.” Without skipping a beat, Graham launches into a faux-hallucinated spiel, plausibly constructed to sound like a real answer.

“Hi Dana, it’s great to meet you,” Graham begins. “I’m Chick Haversplat, or, Chick Bongo for short. And uh, Q3 pipeline, Salesforce, Kayak margin.”

The large language model’s brain immediately breaks: “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Chick Bongo,” it replies. “So it sounds like you’ve been deep in the weeds with Salesforce, hygiene, and managing those Kayak margins during the third quarter.”

Asked to elaborate more on his professional background, Graham explains that “freight, cadence, walnut, a little bit of Richard, sprucewood.”

“Six years of sprucewood — actually seven, if you count Richard,” the influencer swiftly replies.

“It sounds like you built up a significant tenure over the last seven years, including your time with Richard at sprucewood,” the bot rejoins. “I’m curious, can you tell me about a difficult situation you handled during that time?”

“Mostly palette forward, a little bit of denim,” comes Graham’s reply. “You know, every pharmacist is a hallway.”

“It sounds like you have a unique way of navigating the palette-forward and denim aspects of your work,” the AI bot replies, now completely lost in the sauce.

At one point, Graham explains that he’s looking for a job with “two plumes of gauze,” where he can follow “the raccoon protocols.”

“It sounds like you’re looking for a position where you can really lean into those raccoon protocols, and the plumes of gauze,” the virtual recruiter responds.

By the end of the “interview,” Graham has the AI bot explaining that there “was a bit of a gap in the drum counting process, after Tuesday, with the work truck and cousin Francis.”

The ease with which the influencer can immediately take control of the entire interview underscores the fact that AI recruiters aren’t there so much to actually gather information on applicants, but to screen candidates for HR departments overwhelmed by a deluge of AI-generated applications. It isn’t clear how Graham’s application progressed, or what role the interview was even for, but if the automated Dana Whitfield’s enthusiasm is any indication, things went pretty well.

“It has been a pleasure chatting today Chick Bongo,” the AI concluded, “and I will be in touch very soon about the next steps.”

More on AI hallucinations: A Scientist Was Presenting His Vibe-Coded New Work When One of His Colleagues Pointed Out Something Extremely Embarrassing