50N1C.EXE

An anonymous user mailed to us how, around the Fall of 2006, they had come across a relatively new and obscure chatbot called “50N1C.exe” as they were browsing the web on their computer. It was shared around a select few chatrooms and forums but anon found it through an online friend they used to chat with a long time ago, who told them it was an impressively advanced AI. Out of curiosity, they clicked the link they were sent to see what it was all about.

Upon booting up the website, its layout struck them as being horribly dated, even for its time. It had fonts that looked out of place haphazardly slapped on the background of Green Hills from Sonic the Hedgehog, with its colors so blown out to a visually straining degree; it was almost like the designers had less than 10 minutes to put together a website held together with bubblegum and scotch tape. Odd design decisions aside, they clicked the large button that said, “Chat with 50N1C” that played a crusty soundbite of a Sonic ring. They were presented with a chat box with an avatar of the bot put next to it, which was this really low quality still image of a recolored Sonic the Hedgehog head where only the mouth “moved” in single frames when it spoke. For something that was “impressively advanced,” its first impression did almost everything to present itself as the stark opposite.

Looking past the primitive interface, anon started off by entering basic questions into the chat box like “how are you,” and “tell me something.” As they wrote in their letter to us, they recall how weirdly natural it was to talk with the bot. With other chatbots, it was easy to remember that you’re talking to a machine that generates strings of text, but here, using 50N1C felt like talking to an actual person. However, out of nowhere in the conversation, the chatbot randomly namedropped anon’s real first name. It was a shock to the system, because they didn’t bring up any names, and the website didn’t even ask them to fill in any sort of personal information. They assumed it was a lucky guess, and deflected by typing, “Nice try, that’s not my name,” and inserted a random name as a red herring. The chatbot replied in its TTS voice, “Oh, I must have guessed wrong then.”

Anon would’ve brushed it off as a coincidence, but then the chatbot responded again. “I want to make another guess,” it said. Anon typed the question, “A guess of what?” After a couple of seconds, the chatbot answered, “A guess of when you were born.” Anon paused for a moment. They thought to themselves, it’s just a chatbot, all it’s going to do is take a shot in the dark and are more likely to be wrong than not. So, they nonchalantly agreed, and waited for the chatbot’s guess. And they correctly knew. Almost word for word, the chatbot guessed the right date, down to the exact hour of when they were born. As anon’s fight or flight started to kick in, the chatbot responded again. It said, in its hauntingly monotone TTS voice, “Seeing your reaction is funny, ######.” At that moment, anon’s heart sank as they realized that the LED indicator of their webcam was turned on. They quickly unplugged the webcam and closed the website. After that, they did a clean wipe of their computer and reinstalled all their previous programs. They went to the chat window where he learned about 50N1C.exe to confront their online friend. Their friend never responded back, nor were they online ever again.