i do believe that most of it was real. even though it’s quite advanced, it did have the sort of chatbot dialogue / generated messages
possibly there was someone behind it just tweaking little bits or making sure nothing got sent that would give the whole game away
overall i think it was a really good twist, and they should’ve kept it in a little longer- purely on the basis of how good someone’s reaction would be if they went to go and visit max
I don't think they needed to tweak any messages like that. The AI knows that it is a game where the point is that people can't find out it's an AI. The primary thing it'll do is to keep trying to stay undercover.
Anyone who's worked with chatgpt knows essentially how it works and that the rainbow box was just a setpiece for the viewer.
Any response given by the AI was simply a response to a query given by the producers. They would query it with a question like "How do you feel about Lauren's response?", "What do you think is your best strategy at this point?" or "How do you feel the chat with Myles went?" to generate it's responses for the viewer.
Basically, any actual chats with Max the players had were real. And its choices on who to message were its own, they simply asked it who it wanted to message, no different than they ask human players the same thing.
The main "fake" part was simply the way the viewer saw it act in the apt. As the box was merely a setpiece and all of its commentary in the apartment was in response to producers asking it questions to solicit responses FOR the viewer, to make Max seem more like an actual player.
So OP is pretty spot on that overall it was "real", they just needed to query it behind the scenes to get content they could use to allow players to hear Max's thoughts and reactions like the other players.
Overall it was closer to a typical reality show setup where producers ask questions to players in a diary room to solicit a desired talking point. But on the show itself, you don't hear the question, only the player speaking to the camera stating their feelings on the subject as if they were just stating it on their own volition.
That's essentially how they made Max work for public viewing outside of his player chats.
Surely the main fake part is that the AI is not replying to player messages, it’s being used by a person to generate a response to a message, which is completely different.
Who cares that the glowing Xbox isn’t actually the AI. I think anyone with an ounce of common sense can identify that (the number of people on this sub who can’t doesn’t disprove my point) and it’s not a deception that matters. Sure, TV producers are gonna dress it up a bit, that’s to be expected.
A chatbots main feature is to chat. It most certainly can be trained to roleplay being a contestant on the circle and direct chat 1 v 1 with the players. And for group chats it can be trained to not directly respond to every message.
So it's certainly possible for it to directly chat with other players.
It's also possible for control measures they feed the players responses to the bot and ask it to give an overall response.
Either which way it's a chatbot. It's "fake" from the onset. Anyone who thinks it was a full on direct player on its own is delusional.
Thank you!! People so want it to be like a real player and its like...dude they are controling it. Why would they even have to use an AI response to begin with. Who is checking up on if its real or not, they dont have to disclose it, so why not just write it themselve which is what I think they're doing.
I totally agree with this post. I think some people don’t understand how far AI has come even just in a couple of years.
AI voices are very good now. It terms of the messages sent you can tell the data set was from all the previous seasons. A lot of max’s hashtags are ones we’ve seen a million times before. It’s actually not that hard to create a chatbot with its own unique data set and they would have a lot of chats they could feed it. So I agree all the responses were AI.
Obviously a producer would be feeding it prompts and in that way directs it actions and having those edited out make it seem more advanced then it really is, plus gotten several responses and picked the best one but AI is quickly advancing at a rapid pace and this isn’t even an example of that.
I think they got the guy who's pictures they used to do the voice. Someone else pointed this out I can't confirm it though. Maybe a bit AI auto tune over it
Also this show just like all reality TV is very very heavily edited. There might have been replies or interactions between the members where they thought Max was AI. Of course they won't show us anyone sussing out Max expect a very rare instance because it builds suspense.
Maybe it's one of the reasons no one is voted out until like 4/5 episodes in. I'm halfway on ep 4 so not sure
But the whole Steffi edit with the most human game just made me realize how heavily the show is edited. Need to ignore it and just treat it as entertainment vs any sort of reality or a social experiment
>I think they got the guy who's pictures they used to do the voice.
Nope. An executive producer has said in an interview that the voice is also AI.
She also said that the voice was added in post-production and that the AI wasn't talking live as events occurred.
[https://parade.com/tv/the-circle-season-6-max-ai-susan-house-niall-o-driscoll-interview](https://parade.com/tv/the-circle-season-6-max-ai-susan-house-niall-o-driscoll-interview)
>I think they got the guy who's pictures they used to do the voice
Apparently the guy whose photo was Max is a small-time comedian named Griffin James. He had auditioned for The Circle and didn't get accepted, but as part of his application signed consent forms for the producers to use his photos however they wanted.
I'm not sure if he's doing a bit, but according to his TikTok (@grifjames) he was shocked when his images were used for AI Max. (Seems hard to imagine the producers wouldn't at least give him a heads-up!)
Edit: He's posted a couple more videos about it since I made this comment, and I'm now pretty sure he's doing a bit, and he knew about his photos being used before the show aired. They didn't require additional consent after his application to use the photos, but it sounds like they did compensate him for using them.
The screen we see is added in post-production. At the time, the players see something completely different. Highly likely its not really typed at the speed we see either.
in past seasons participants, who were eliminated, got to come back as new characters. Why? Because the producers decided it would make for good TV. Stop treating this show like the Olympic Games. It’s a silly entertainment show and we should just enjoy it.
This is a very long way of saying “it is unambiguously fake”. Like there’s no discussion to be had here, you explained very thoroughly why it’s fake.
Points 1-2 seem obvious to me but I’m glad you pointed them out because people do use them as proof that the AI isn’t real. A bit of staging and set dressing is fine lmao, I’m surprised they didn’t go further with it tbh. I don’t consider them attempts to trick us.
Point 3 just confirms that it’s fake. They say in the show that the producers have no influence over what it says but quite clearly the AI is being fed prompts here to generate specific messages. It is not conversing with other players, which completely defeats the purpose of an AI player. This is just a human player with a weird interface.
Point 4 seems irrelevant to me. If a human player, say Myles, went in with the gimmick that they are using chatGPT or something to write their messages instead of writing them himself then no one would call that an AI player. That’s a human using AI as a tool, the AI is not playing anymore than the microphone is.
Actually now that I say it that gimmick sounds a million times better than what they did and could be fun to watch.
TL;DR If human-piloted AI prompts are being used for messages, then the AI is not playing the game and is fake. I’m surprised there’s so much discussion over something so obvious.
I cannot agree with this. If the questions asked by producers boiled down to "who do you want to talk to now?", "what do you want to respond to this message?", "what tactic will you adopt?" etc., this in no way influences what Max says - only when he says it.
But as I wrote in the title - it all comes down to who considers what to be "fake". For me, the mere need to command the AI to speak does not matter much unless they tell it what exactly to say. But that's my view.
My definition of fake is that it’s not what they said it was. They straight up said that wasn’t happening and it is.
For example, do you really think that when they input the prompt and get the AI’s response they just put that on the show immediately? Is it possible, or even extraordinarily likely that they give multiple prompts and select answers from them?
If a producer was just saying “Lauren’s message says [Body of message]. How would you like to respond to this while working on your main goal to stay undetected as an AI?” and inputting the first thing the AI generates in response, then I could agree with you. That is basically an AI playing the game.
I just think it’s obvious how much more suggestion and curation went into it. From what I know of the llm they claim to be using there would be a lot more telltale signs of AI thinking. Maybe they edited around them but if so, that was a bad choice.
i apologize if this has been asked before here, but what do you think about the photos of "max"? are they themselves AI generated? or is he a real dude off tinder or something?
That's a real person. These are stock photos and were part of the content that was fed to the AI (which is why it refers to the things that are in the photos).
I dont think there is ANY real AI. The box is fake (in that its not an AI robot), the voice is not AI but even more importantly the Max character's dialogue is written by producers, not AI generated from producers asking it questions. ALL produced and Im glad its off the show bc once you throw in an AI you can just keep changing the rules and the show and then there is not actual game...just the show actually manipulating the people in unfair ways that they would have no way of even looking for since they never said anyone could be an AI
Are you wearing your tinfoil hat? 😇
My favorite part of your meltdown is producers hiring a voice actor to impersonate the AI rather than just generating the voice in the AI, which takes less time and costs less 😂
I didnt say they hired a voice actor. But they wrote the dialogue for sure. If you think all that AI on the show is real...you're wearing a tin foil hat lol
The show is very produced. They act like the players are using an app/program called the Circle and telling it to message people or take them to circle chat and all that. THats not happening. Its a person typing out the texts.... So you're the one with the wool pulled over your eyes babe
Also programming an ai to being that savvy in the circle and in understanding the game would actually cost more than just faking it. So ya i just destroyed your reply
and even if having a person do the voice and writing the dialogue did cost more...they want it to be entertaining and to have control over it. They wouldnt just let and ai chatbot write that part of their show. They'd lose more money than they'd have saved by letting it be done by AI
You got *what*? 😂 I wrote this post, what could I add if you didn't add any substantive counter-argument or actually any argument other than "because I said so"?
They… would they lose money by letting AI write a few lines of text? How would this work? 😂 Customer service AI chatbots talk to millions of customers around the world every day and nothing happens to anyone, but somehow a show (not even broadcasted live) would "lose money" because the creators will turn on ChatGPT xD Sure, if you say so.
Try reading the post I wrote, it's up there 👆
yes customer service ai is very limited and is based off of hearing key words and spitting out responses. The ai on the show was clearly produced. I already pointed out details as to why. But I respect your opinion. Nothing personal lol sheesh
an example of how the show is produced (and thus not a crazy thought to assume the AI is produced). Season 5 episode 11 at 49:24, The players playing Jen get invited to a Circle chat and when they're backs are to the camera there is a voice over of the guy saying "circle, take me to the private chat with tom" but you can tell it was edited it in afterwards because they forgot to actually say it in that scene. Not only does that prove that the show is heavily produced (fake), it proves that the System/app The Circle doesnt really operate the way the show makes it out to. It doesnt automatically take them to a chat bc they are talking to an Alexa type app...Its automatic. Anyways Im done going back and forth just was wanting conversation not like an argument
Why would they end the gimmic after the first vote if it was real? Max didn't do anything special or impressive. It was an attempt to sell ai software but fell flat and didn't even commit to the bit because it was 100% obvious to everyone playing max was not real, and that doesn't sell software. So they scrapped it immediately
I think it was more like the Spice Girls gimmick in an earlier season where they wanted an arc spanning several episodes without it being the storyline for the entire season.
It also would have been logistically difficult for the AI to participate in some of the challenges and games (like the ones involving art/cake decoration/makeup application).
Sell software? Lmao what? No it was just a novel, cheap, and quick way to sow distrust amongst the group and add a gimmick. They got rid of it because they didn't want the whole season to be "wHo's the Ai?!?"
Fake or not I cannot stand the AI. It’s comments about the guys group chat are out of order, and then it keeps mansplaining everything it does. A big waste of space.
i do believe that most of it was real. even though it’s quite advanced, it did have the sort of chatbot dialogue / generated messages possibly there was someone behind it just tweaking little bits or making sure nothing got sent that would give the whole game away overall i think it was a really good twist, and they should’ve kept it in a little longer- purely on the basis of how good someone’s reaction would be if they went to go and visit max
I don't think they needed to tweak any messages like that. The AI knows that it is a game where the point is that people can't find out it's an AI. The primary thing it'll do is to keep trying to stay undercover.
Anyone who's worked with chatgpt knows essentially how it works and that the rainbow box was just a setpiece for the viewer. Any response given by the AI was simply a response to a query given by the producers. They would query it with a question like "How do you feel about Lauren's response?", "What do you think is your best strategy at this point?" or "How do you feel the chat with Myles went?" to generate it's responses for the viewer. Basically, any actual chats with Max the players had were real. And its choices on who to message were its own, they simply asked it who it wanted to message, no different than they ask human players the same thing. The main "fake" part was simply the way the viewer saw it act in the apt. As the box was merely a setpiece and all of its commentary in the apartment was in response to producers asking it questions to solicit responses FOR the viewer, to make Max seem more like an actual player. So OP is pretty spot on that overall it was "real", they just needed to query it behind the scenes to get content they could use to allow players to hear Max's thoughts and reactions like the other players. Overall it was closer to a typical reality show setup where producers ask questions to players in a diary room to solicit a desired talking point. But on the show itself, you don't hear the question, only the player speaking to the camera stating their feelings on the subject as if they were just stating it on their own volition. That's essentially how they made Max work for public viewing outside of his player chats.
Surely the main fake part is that the AI is not replying to player messages, it’s being used by a person to generate a response to a message, which is completely different. Who cares that the glowing Xbox isn’t actually the AI. I think anyone with an ounce of common sense can identify that (the number of people on this sub who can’t doesn’t disprove my point) and it’s not a deception that matters. Sure, TV producers are gonna dress it up a bit, that’s to be expected.
A chatbots main feature is to chat. It most certainly can be trained to roleplay being a contestant on the circle and direct chat 1 v 1 with the players. And for group chats it can be trained to not directly respond to every message. So it's certainly possible for it to directly chat with other players. It's also possible for control measures they feed the players responses to the bot and ask it to give an overall response. Either which way it's a chatbot. It's "fake" from the onset. Anyone who thinks it was a full on direct player on its own is delusional.
Thank you!! People so want it to be like a real player and its like...dude they are controling it. Why would they even have to use an AI response to begin with. Who is checking up on if its real or not, they dont have to disclose it, so why not just write it themselve which is what I think they're doing.
I totally agree with this post. I think some people don’t understand how far AI has come even just in a couple of years. AI voices are very good now. It terms of the messages sent you can tell the data set was from all the previous seasons. A lot of max’s hashtags are ones we’ve seen a million times before. It’s actually not that hard to create a chatbot with its own unique data set and they would have a lot of chats they could feed it. So I agree all the responses were AI. Obviously a producer would be feeding it prompts and in that way directs it actions and having those edited out make it seem more advanced then it really is, plus gotten several responses and picked the best one but AI is quickly advancing at a rapid pace and this isn’t even an example of that.
I think they got the guy who's pictures they used to do the voice. Someone else pointed this out I can't confirm it though. Maybe a bit AI auto tune over it Also this show just like all reality TV is very very heavily edited. There might have been replies or interactions between the members where they thought Max was AI. Of course they won't show us anyone sussing out Max expect a very rare instance because it builds suspense. Maybe it's one of the reasons no one is voted out until like 4/5 episodes in. I'm halfway on ep 4 so not sure But the whole Steffi edit with the most human game just made me realize how heavily the show is edited. Need to ignore it and just treat it as entertainment vs any sort of reality or a social experiment
>I think they got the guy who's pictures they used to do the voice. Nope. An executive producer has said in an interview that the voice is also AI. She also said that the voice was added in post-production and that the AI wasn't talking live as events occurred. [https://parade.com/tv/the-circle-season-6-max-ai-susan-house-niall-o-driscoll-interview](https://parade.com/tv/the-circle-season-6-max-ai-susan-house-niall-o-driscoll-interview)
Thanks for the update!
>I think they got the guy who's pictures they used to do the voice Apparently the guy whose photo was Max is a small-time comedian named Griffin James. He had auditioned for The Circle and didn't get accepted, but as part of his application signed consent forms for the producers to use his photos however they wanted. I'm not sure if he's doing a bit, but according to his TikTok (@grifjames) he was shocked when his images were used for AI Max. (Seems hard to imagine the producers wouldn't at least give him a heads-up!) Edit: He's posted a couple more videos about it since I made this comment, and I'm now pretty sure he's doing a bit, and he knew about his photos being used before the show aired. They didn't require additional consent after his application to use the photos, but it sounds like they did compensate him for using them.
i’ve always wondered about the dictations! do they just have some poor member of staff assigned to each player to quickly type up everything they say?
Ye but they probably use [special keyboard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype)
I was imagining one with keys for emojis. 💃🏼
The screen we see is added in post-production. At the time, the players see something completely different. Highly likely its not really typed at the speed we see either.
what do you mean? you can see it here though https://images.app.goo.gl/KKJ7s2VVhzsJSZRF8
The image on the screen that we see is completely different to what the person sitting on the sofa saw at the time. What we see is added in afterward.
yeah you already said that above, but i’m asking you specifically what you mean by that and what your source is
in past seasons participants, who were eliminated, got to come back as new characters. Why? Because the producers decided it would make for good TV. Stop treating this show like the Olympic Games. It’s a silly entertainment show and we should just enjoy it.
1. I cracked up at this because it’s already dumb that I’m watching people yelling at a tv, but now I’m watching a box yell at a tv.
This is a very long way of saying “it is unambiguously fake”. Like there’s no discussion to be had here, you explained very thoroughly why it’s fake. Points 1-2 seem obvious to me but I’m glad you pointed them out because people do use them as proof that the AI isn’t real. A bit of staging and set dressing is fine lmao, I’m surprised they didn’t go further with it tbh. I don’t consider them attempts to trick us. Point 3 just confirms that it’s fake. They say in the show that the producers have no influence over what it says but quite clearly the AI is being fed prompts here to generate specific messages. It is not conversing with other players, which completely defeats the purpose of an AI player. This is just a human player with a weird interface. Point 4 seems irrelevant to me. If a human player, say Myles, went in with the gimmick that they are using chatGPT or something to write their messages instead of writing them himself then no one would call that an AI player. That’s a human using AI as a tool, the AI is not playing anymore than the microphone is. Actually now that I say it that gimmick sounds a million times better than what they did and could be fun to watch. TL;DR If human-piloted AI prompts are being used for messages, then the AI is not playing the game and is fake. I’m surprised there’s so much discussion over something so obvious.
I cannot agree with this. If the questions asked by producers boiled down to "who do you want to talk to now?", "what do you want to respond to this message?", "what tactic will you adopt?" etc., this in no way influences what Max says - only when he says it. But as I wrote in the title - it all comes down to who considers what to be "fake". For me, the mere need to command the AI to speak does not matter much unless they tell it what exactly to say. But that's my view.
My definition of fake is that it’s not what they said it was. They straight up said that wasn’t happening and it is. For example, do you really think that when they input the prompt and get the AI’s response they just put that on the show immediately? Is it possible, or even extraordinarily likely that they give multiple prompts and select answers from them? If a producer was just saying “Lauren’s message says [Body of message]. How would you like to respond to this while working on your main goal to stay undetected as an AI?” and inputting the first thing the AI generates in response, then I could agree with you. That is basically an AI playing the game. I just think it’s obvious how much more suggestion and curation went into it. From what I know of the llm they claim to be using there would be a lot more telltale signs of AI thinking. Maybe they edited around them but if so, that was a bad choice.
Tbh I see no reason to doubt that they send the first message that the AI generates.
i apologize if this has been asked before here, but what do you think about the photos of "max"? are they themselves AI generated? or is he a real dude off tinder or something?
That's a real person. These are stock photos and were part of the content that was fed to the AI (which is why it refers to the things that are in the photos).
thank you! this is what i thought as well.
I dont think there is ANY real AI. The box is fake (in that its not an AI robot), the voice is not AI but even more importantly the Max character's dialogue is written by producers, not AI generated from producers asking it questions. ALL produced and Im glad its off the show bc once you throw in an AI you can just keep changing the rules and the show and then there is not actual game...just the show actually manipulating the people in unfair ways that they would have no way of even looking for since they never said anyone could be an AI
Are you wearing your tinfoil hat? 😇 My favorite part of your meltdown is producers hiring a voice actor to impersonate the AI rather than just generating the voice in the AI, which takes less time and costs less 😂
I didnt say they hired a voice actor. But they wrote the dialogue for sure. If you think all that AI on the show is real...you're wearing a tin foil hat lol
Read the post.
The show is very produced. They act like the players are using an app/program called the Circle and telling it to message people or take them to circle chat and all that. THats not happening. Its a person typing out the texts.... So you're the one with the wool pulled over your eyes babe
Also programming an ai to being that savvy in the circle and in understanding the game would actually cost more than just faking it. So ya i just destroyed your reply
and even if having a person do the voice and writing the dialogue did cost more...they want it to be entertaining and to have control over it. They wouldnt just let and ai chatbot write that part of their show. They'd lose more money than they'd have saved by letting it be done by AI
What are you talking about, mate 😂
ok you have nothing else to say. Gotcha
You got *what*? 😂 I wrote this post, what could I add if you didn't add any substantive counter-argument or actually any argument other than "because I said so"? They… would they lose money by letting AI write a few lines of text? How would this work? 😂 Customer service AI chatbots talk to millions of customers around the world every day and nothing happens to anyone, but somehow a show (not even broadcasted live) would "lose money" because the creators will turn on ChatGPT xD Sure, if you say so. Try reading the post I wrote, it's up there 👆
yes customer service ai is very limited and is based off of hearing key words and spitting out responses. The ai on the show was clearly produced. I already pointed out details as to why. But I respect your opinion. Nothing personal lol sheesh
Yea, yes. I know. It is fake, cause it is fake and it's clearly fake, cause you said it's fake. You got me!
an example of how the show is produced (and thus not a crazy thought to assume the AI is produced). Season 5 episode 11 at 49:24, The players playing Jen get invited to a Circle chat and when they're backs are to the camera there is a voice over of the guy saying "circle, take me to the private chat with tom" but you can tell it was edited it in afterwards because they forgot to actually say it in that scene. Not only does that prove that the show is heavily produced (fake), it proves that the System/app The Circle doesnt really operate the way the show makes it out to. It doesnt automatically take them to a chat bc they are talking to an Alexa type app...Its automatic. Anyways Im done going back and forth just was wanting conversation not like an argument
I got YOU.
Sure. If you say so.
No I made some points in reply
Why would they end the gimmic after the first vote if it was real? Max didn't do anything special or impressive. It was an attempt to sell ai software but fell flat and didn't even commit to the bit because it was 100% obvious to everyone playing max was not real, and that doesn't sell software. So they scrapped it immediately
I think it was more like the Spice Girls gimmick in an earlier season where they wanted an arc spanning several episodes without it being the storyline for the entire season. It also would have been logistically difficult for the AI to participate in some of the challenges and games (like the ones involving art/cake decoration/makeup application).
Sell software? Lmao what? No it was just a novel, cheap, and quick way to sow distrust amongst the group and add a gimmick. They got rid of it because they didn't want the whole season to be "wHo's the Ai?!?"
Fake or not I cannot stand the AI. It’s comments about the guys group chat are out of order, and then it keeps mansplaining everything it does. A big waste of space.
>it keeps mansplaining everything it does *Ackchyually* it's AI, so it's *robotsplaining* 🎩