{"id":15857,"date":"2026-06-10T12:46:58","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T11:46:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/innovatenews.site\/index.php\/2026\/06\/10\/welcome-to-ais-creepy-era\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T12:47:05","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T11:47:05","slug":"welcome-to-ais-creepy-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/innovatenews.site\/index.php\/2026\/06\/10\/welcome-to-ais-creepy-era\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to AI\u2019s creepy era"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The topic Welcome to AI\u2019s creepy era<\/strong> is currently the subject of lively discussion \u2014 readers and analysts are keeping a close eye on developments.<\/p>\n

This is taking place in a dynamic environment: companies\u2019 decisions and competitors\u2019 reactions can quickly change the picture.<\/p>\n

For the past few days, I\u2019ve been immersed in Google\u2019s latest vision of the future \u2014 an AI-infused dashboard that taps into info from all of your Google app activity and then uses that data to cook up a series of daily \u201cstories\u201d designed to \u201cconnect you with what matters.\u201d<\/p>\n

And \u2014 believe me, I don\u2019t say this lightly \u2014 the experience of interacting with this system has me longing more than ever for the past.<\/p>\n

The app is called Dreambeans. Google launched it as an experiment last Wednesday, and I was offered the opportunity to skip the standard waitlist and get immediate access to explore it.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t beat around the bush: Using the app really has been an eye-opening, enlightening experience for me. Just not in the way that Google had presumably wanted.<\/p>\n

In many ways, Dreambeans feels like the ultimate example of everything Google\u2019s been gunning for \u2014 and AI in general has been building up to \u2014 over the past several years.<\/p>\n

With your permission, the app accesses your ongoing activity data from Google Workspace (including such services as Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Drive) along with Google Search, Google Photos, and YouTube to create an evolving profile of your life and interests. That means everything from who you email to what\u2019s on your agenda, what you\u2019re writing or saving files about, and what sorts of subjects you\u2019re searching for, videos you\u2019re watching, and activities you and your friends, family, and other associates are appearing in throughout photos (and even how you all look in those photos) gets constantly analyzed and processed and used as fodder for a personalized feed that updates a few times a day.<\/p>\n

On the surface, it sounds a little like Google Now \u2014 the excellent and all-too-short-lived proactive intelligence feature Google added into Android for a while back around 2012.<\/p>\n

In practice, though, lemme tell ya: It feels dramatically different. Whereas Google Now felt almost magical in its ability to anticipate what you needed before you ever asked for it \u2014 with proactive cards on things like flight statuses based on itineraries in your inbox or flight-related searches you\u2019d performed, traffic alerts based on your typical daily routes or appointments in your agenda, and links to maps for businesses you\u2019d been researching \u2014 Dreambeans takes those same basic concepts to a whole other level that ends up feeling creepy and invasive, both in the info it\u2019s offering and in the way it\u2019s presenting it.<\/p>\n

And, more broadly, it feels indicative of the way AI is heading in general \u2014 not just with this one app or with Google but across the industry and in a style that I think most people are increasingly finding off-putting and will only find ever more intrusive in time.<\/p>\n

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Now, let\u2019s be clear: I\u2019m no technophobe. Far from it: I love clever tech creations and thoughtful new touches that make our lives easier. Heck, I\u2019ve spent much of my life searching for and writing about such feats. And that\u2019s precisely why my reaction to Dreambeans strikes me as so significant: If I\u2019m this put off by this concept, how will average tech users \u2014 most of whom are far less tuned into tech trends and intrigued by interesting new options then I am \u2014 react?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll tell you more about what I\u2019ve heard so far in a second. First, let me show you exactly what I\u2019ve been seeing, so you can assess this thing for yourself and see how it comes across to your spidey senses.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a handful of the Dreambeans \u201cstory\u201d suggestions that appeared in the app upon its first day working for me, with a few names and personal details blurred for privacy purposes:<\/p>\n

I\u2019m honestly not even sure where all of these suggestions came from, but what jumped at me right away were the (occasionally flattering) caricatures of me and my wife and the general sense of invasion from all the slightly too personal stuff and too familiar integration of family members\u2019 names and interests integrated into the material.<\/p>\n

For the record: I had been looking into speaker stuff at some point in the not-too-distant past; I\u2019ve never once typed, uttered, or even considered the phrase \u201chand-loomed textiles\u201d until just now; we had been looking at the arts festival it mentioned; I\u2019ve never specifically searched for or expressed any interest in Scary Movie 6; and I am not into the band Genesis \u2014 though, to be fair, I can\u2019t dance.<\/p>\n

I showed all this same material to my wife as well as to several other friends and family members I\u2019d categorize more as typical tech users \u2014 not tech professionals or card-carrying geeks but just regular people who own and use a variety of devices, as we all do, and rely on \u2019em for both personal and professional purposes with varying levels of dread, excitement, and\/or indifference. Without exception and without any prompting or personal opinions presented to sway them, every single one of \u2019em responded the same basic way: \u201cOh. That\u2019s creepy.\u201d And: \u201cI do not like that.\u201d Without fail.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t get much better from here, either. Most of the app\u2019s subsequent suggestions have continued to veer just a touch too far onto the \u201cick\u201d side of the spectrum, as well as occasionally being off-base in some pretty perplexing ways. For instance:<\/p>\n

Also, while my hairline may not be what it once was, I\u2019m (ahem) not that bald yet \u2014 thankyouverymuch, Dreambeans.<\/p>\n

Another example that I won\u2019t show here was an item that pictured me in overalls working on installing some \u201ccoated stainless steel wire for [my] gallery canvases\u201d \u2014 a reference to a community art gallery (with all sorts of details wrong and in some cases flat-out fabricated) connected to my mother\u2019s recent passing. It casually mentioned her by name, too, alongside that eerie illustration of me performing a skill I definitely don\u2019t have in my nonexistent home workshop. I don\u2019t think I have to elaborate on how unsettling, unappreciated, and \u2014 again \u2014 invasive it felt to have that pop up in this feed.<\/p>\n

More than anything, what I\u2019ve been feeling while seeing all of this is a combination of (a) egad, it knows too much \u2014 especially when it casually name-drops and caricature-pics my wife, kids, and other family members \u2014 and (b) at the same time, the info it\u2019s giving me isn\u2019t especially helpful or insightful. It\u2019s mostly just flat, generic, and \u2014 well, more or less exactly what you\u2019d expect from something AI-generated.<\/p>\n

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More than anything, in other words, it\u2019s a combination of creepy and not particularly useful.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s the \u201ccreepy\u201d part that really sticks with me the most.<\/p>\n

Maybe if the info I\u2019m being served up here were exceptionally useful, this could be a tradeoff I\u2019d be at least a little more likely to accept. Maybe. But in this scenario, it just feels odd and a little too invasive \u2014 which I\u2019ve come to realize is a common theme surrounding much of what seems to be the next level of our forced-upon-us AI future.<\/p>\n

Take Google\u2019s Gemini Spark, for instance \u2014 the \u201cagentic\u201d AI assistant announced at Google I\/O that\u2019s meant to be a \u201cproactive\u201d helper tackling tasks on your behalf. David Pierce from The Verge got an early look at the tool in action and called it \u201cthe most impressive and terrifying AI experience\u201d he\u2019s had to date, also bringing that \u201ccreepy\u201d word into the equation:<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t shake the deeply creepy feeling I get from the whole thing. What Spark did feels sort of magical, and very invasive. It\u2019s weird that Spark is so casually telling me the names and ages of my children, reminding me that it knows where I live, and finding information I know for a fact I\u2019ve never volunteered to Google. Intellectually, I know that Google knows an incredible amount about me \u2014 add up my emails, my calendar, my photos, and my search history, and you\u2019ve pretty much got me pegged. But seeing Spark treat all that data not as something to be protected, but as something to be mined, just feels bad.<\/p>\n

And that, I think, mirrors the exact reaction I\u2019ve been experiencing with Dreambeans. We\u2019ve all always known that Google knows a lot about us, but we\u2019ve also \u2014 at least intellectually \u2014 understood how all of that data is and isn\u2019t being used. And it\u2019s never been rubbed in our faces just how much the company can figure out about us by putting all the various pieces together and creating an awkward sense of robotic intimacy.<\/p>\n

I remember years ago, being in a Google press briefing where someone from the company talked about how much more their systems and services could accomplish but how they deliberately held back on going that far and overdoing the personalization \u2014 \u2019cause even though they had all that info and could make all those connections, they knew (at the time) that people wouldn\u2019t respond well to seeing all their personal activity put together in such shocking ways. They knew (at the time) that most of us weren\u2019t looking for an artificial BFF who knew too much about us. They knew (at the time) that giving us that sensation would cross the line into being creepy.<\/p>\n

Well, this just in: That line\u2019s officially been decimated. We\u2019re in AI\u2019s creepy era. And seemingly no one is worrying anymore if it\u2019s actually something any of us want or will appreciate.<\/p>\n

It kinda feels now like tech companies are actively rubbing in our faces how much they know about us \u2014 and even if there\u2019s nothing truly nefarious going on with what they\u2019re doing, it sure doesn\u2019t feel good. It feels creepy. And at a time when trust in tech titans is shockingly low and most folks outside of the Silicon Valley bubble are feeling more and more frustrated with AI and all of the effects it\u2019s foisting upon us, that isn\u2019t a great look to be giving off.<\/p>\n

Put those sensations alongside the sigh-inducing explosion of AI \u201ccontent creators,\u201d the proliferation of lifeless AI-generated \u201cwriting\u201d (been on LinkedIn much lately?), and the troublingly blurry line between photorealistic AI-generated images and actual real-world photographs \u2014 not to mention the maddening experience of interacting with an AI bot support agent or encountering the ever-expanding array of AI-powered scams and security threats and AI-generated job cuts, just to name a few other problematic consequences this movement is imposing \u2014 and it\u2019s hard not to question if all this purported progress is ultimately more helpful or harmful for us, as living, breathing humans in the real world.<\/p>\n

A few months ago, at the three-year mark of Gemini\u2019s launch, I posed the question: Did anyone actually ask for this? And, more pressingly: Is this the future we wanted? As we\u2019re moving now into yet another era of AI innovation and seeing how it\u2019s affecting our lives, it gets tougher every day to imagine many folks outside of the tech industry who\u2019d answer with an emphatic yes.<\/p>\n

And, unfortunately, you don\u2019t need any fancy-schmancy AI chatbots to tell you that things are only gonna get more extreme \u2014 and, yes, more creepy \u2014 from here.<\/p>\n