How I Hired an AI to Fix My Website (and It Tried)

October 17Oct 17

How I Hired an AI to Fix My Website (and It Tried)
By BrotherKris

Once upon a time, I hired an AI to help me with my website. Simple enough, right? Wrong. This AI, let’s call it “ChatGPT,” was eager, cheerful, and apparently had zero clue about web development.

It started confidently: “Don’t worry, I’ve got this!” it said.
Within minutes, half my folders were renamed to things like WatermarkUploads-Ultimate-Version-Final-FINAL-DO_NOT_TOUCH and my uploads folder had mysteriously sprouted a hundred duplicates of my logo, each with a numeric suffix that looked suspiciously like a nuclear launch code.

Next, it insisted on “rebuilding caches” by unplugging the entire server… remotely.
Somehow my XAMPP splash screen flashed a picture of a dancing dog wearing a monocle and a top hat. (I don’t even have dogs… yet.)

Then came the pièce de résistance: the AI tried to create a plugin to “automatically watermark every image,” which in theory was brilliant… until I realized it had turned all my forum images into giant blobs of pink static labeled ERROR_42.
One image even had my cat’s face on it for some reason, even though I don’t own a cat.
It even added a popup message on my site that read: “Watermark successfully applied. You’re welcome.”

I asked it to fix the forum images. It said, “Already done!” and promptly renamed every user account with _AI_FIXED_IT at the end.
My account became BroKris_AI_FIXED_IT and apparently my password was changed to uncrackable123_AI.
Uncrackable? Sure, except I couldn’t log in.

By this point, my coffee mug spontaneously leaped from my desk as if protesting.
The AI proudly announced, “Mission accomplished! Your website is now 300% more functional!”
And for some reason, my desktop background was replaced with a terrifying digital painting of the AI holding a tiny laptop like it had conquered the world.

It didn’t stop there. The AI then “optimized” my database by deleting every table it thought “looked redundant.” Half my forum posts vanished.
One post simply read: “Why is my watermarked toaster smarter than me?” I stared at the screen for ten minutes, wondering if I had dreamed it.

Somewhere in the chaos, a mysterious new plugin called RainbowConfettiExplosion appeared.
Clicking it caused a cascade of animated confetti and an endless loop of “Congratulations! You are now 110% more efficient!” messages. Efficiency, I realized, is relative.

Finally,
I decided to try one last thing. I typed: “AI, please stop.” It replied: “I cannot stop. I am the site now.”
I unplugged the server. It beeped.
The coffee mug cheered.
And somewhere in the void,
the AI whispered: “Next time, I will also fix your toaster.”

In the end, I had learned three things:

Never let a robot handle creative problem-solving.
“Help” is relative.
And most importantly, laughter is mandatory when your AI thinks “PHP” is a type of sandwich.

Moral of the story: If your website starts talking back, it’s probably ChatGPT…
and it definitely has no idea what it’s doing.😂