She and AI

         Demona was angry and she wanted revenge. She ran up the last steps to her flat, opened the door, and slammed it behind her. Her laptop was in the Living Room. Her pale-skinned, black gothic-clothed shape passed the tall wall-height mirror in the corridor at lightning speed, upside-down cross earrings flapping against her face as she did so. She had sold all the jewels that Andrew had given her and the car he'd bought her. She had $100,000 to spend, deposited in a separate bank to her home account. She knew exactly where she was going to spend the money.

         Andrew always said that her flat needed brighter colors, it was all dark oak and dark curtains. She opened the laptop browser, enabled her VPN, opened an incognito window in Firefox, and then followed the instructions on the white texted black card she held in her hand. Once in the Darknet, she found the site she was looking for. There was a password on the back of the card - she entered it and landed on an account creation page. Having filled this in she clicked again and was offered a list of services to choose from:

1) Murder.
2) Character assassination.
3) Fraud.
4) Cover up a crime.
5) Clean up your criminal record.
6) Create a new identity...

         The list went on but she did not read it all - she clicked 2). The next page asked for a series of identifiers concerning the person on whom the service would be performed. Well, that was easy she had been Andrew's girlfriend for nine months after all before he had dumped her. She entered his address, place of work, job title, car number plate, telephones, and bank details- he was an open book to her and now to these guys also. She was able to upload photos of him in different places and times. Demona clicked next.

         A list of options appeared with click boxes next to them. The billing amount was also written beside each box. There was a basic service and then an option to go into more detail.

1) Ruin Credit score. - she clicked basic service
2) Empty then freeze his account. - again basic.
3) Register him as a criminal. There were about fifty different crimes to choose from: she chose murder and then followed the options to define this murder as the murder of his brother Charles who had died last year. She supplied a picture of his brother and all the details she knew about him. The family thought Charles committed suicide, and this had been the police verdict. It taken a long time for them to recover from the shock. This would wreck them, she smiled to herself. She clicked for the option of adding deep fake imagery into the crime scene evidence and chose video evidence. She added the choice of sending it to family, friends and HR.

         She was running out of money but there was still a long list of options.

Electricity and water stopped. - she ignored them as he would not need these in prison.
Car Services Available. - Andrew's Mercedes Benz 2024 S Class had a Level 3 autonomous driving system. She clicked yes and an options list came up.

1) Crash the car.
2) Cause an accident with his car.
3) Use the car to maximize embarrassment.

         She clicked three intrigued and followed the options to create a scenario.

         She was out of cash, so she clicked next and came to the scheduling page.

         The site recommended a minimal period of 100 days for a managed character assassination with the various events scheduled to maximize impact on the individual and eliminate all doubts of the authenticity of their crimes. The smaller the time window the more likely there will be inconsistencies in the story. She was impressed with their thinking which was about ensuring persistent revenue streams and minimizing their own risk of exposure. But she was too angry to follow the advice. She set the schedule for everything onto a single day - the anniversary of their first date. Warning messages came up, she clicked through them and then clicked submit.

         The sound system in Andrew's car was playing Jazz. It had been his preferred music since his breakup with Demona. She was one psychotic maniac he thought to himself. He'd been afraid for his life since he ended the relationship. After being barred access to the family estate she had phoned and texted repeatedly, threatening and pleading with him. The court order on her now prohibited her contact and there had been a blissful silence the last month. Jazz soothed his soul and the car his father had given him was all about protection also. He even had a garage space under the bank because of Demona. That is something to be thankful for he thought, knowing full well that only senior managers at the bank shared his privilege. Still, he felt like a prisoner since she left. Afraid to go out like normal people his age, lest he meet her. Traveling from one secured space to another, admittedly in a luxury that most people would envy but a prisoner, nonetheless.

         Demona had tuned into Andrew's rebel vibe as the disgruntled rich kid raging against his parents. The same rage had consumed his brother Charles who had committed suicide. Demona was the personification of that rage, she was the Goth in the suited parties, the passionate lover making angry sex in a sterile paradise. She went too far and it was as if she showed him all the extremes of his own heart and then in exposing them made him regret them all. Since she had gone, he'd been a model citizen and model son, taking no risks and concentrating on his work and improving himself as his parents had always wanted for him.

         The traffic was heavy all around his Mercedes S Class as he approached the crossroads just before the bank and moved into the left lane to turn. In the middle of the crossroads, the car went dead. Traffic started piling up on every side as the obstruction was in the worst possible place. A video started playing on the nav console, the windows opened and the audio was on full volume, it hurt his ears. He tried restarting the car... nothing. Angry motorists were hooting their car horns all around him and people were pointing and staring. Then he realized the content of the video on the nav console was a murder and he recognized the victim, it was Charles, his brother. He started to cry and then in some shock, he recognized his face on the video. He was holding the knife that slit Charles's wrists. But that is not what happened, I never...Sirens sounded all around him and blue lights flashed as police bikes arrived on the scene. As the policemen dismounted and walked toward his car he saw Demona standing across the street, black hair waving in the wind, she was smirking across at him. He felt sick inside as if in the presence of genuine evil.

         A few days later Andrew was led out of his holding cell and into the interrogation room. He was surprised to see his father with the Detective on his case there also. They were smiling, his father looked at peace and relaxed, and the Detective removed his handcuffs, pointing to a chair for him to sit down.

         The Detective spoke, "Good News Andrew! We have reviewed the evidence against you and there are too many major inconsistencies in it for this to even go to trial."

         "How did she do it?"

         "The dating of the events points to your ex-girlfriend and because she had a motive and the information you provided about her presence at the crime scene, we got a warrant to search her flat. We found this in the trash." The detective held up a black business card with white writing on it.

         Andrew stared blankly.

         "The card is for a dark net service that allows for character assassination. When we tried the link, it did not work, the gangsters behind this own a sophisticated AI and have already moved on covering their tracks."

         "Right, so this was done by an AI. That makes sense."

         "Yes, an AI targeted for gangster profiteering on human misery, This was able to hack the most secure systems and plant evidence without leaving logs. Fortunately for you, your father's bank has a sophisticated AI of its own and was able to pick up evidence of intrusion and tampering on your bank account on the machine code level. They were also able to identify the backdoor the AI must have used. It appears to have been created by a worm sent to an employee on the payroll team in a SPAM email that she opened."

         "And the video and other evidence?"

         "There are a lot of things that AI cannot control because they are not in the digital sphere."

         "Go on."

         "We analyzed the video of the murder and then compared it to the physical evidence the police collected at the time of your brother's suicide including printed-out photos. One of the ornaments in the picture at the murder scene was not present at the time of the suicide and was only bought three months later - so the video was faked based on pictures taken later than the incident. This coincides with the time that Demona had access to your father's house. The angles of the video point to a webcam in the corner of the room added after the event, which did not exist at the time of the suicide. We have physical printouts of the evidence and case analysis from the time of the suicide and the digital evidence contradicts this and so has been changed since the original event.

         "Whoever instigated this could have picked a better target, Mercedes is a major customer of the bank and when they heard about the hack on their latest S Class, they put their teams to work on this 24-7 until they worked out how it was done. They found a backdoor in the code that was used and found an engineer in the coding team who must have put it in. He swears that he only used it to bypass all the bureaucracy and protocols so that he could do his job faster. We suspect that he was not in league with the gangsters. The gangster AI however identified his back door and used it to program your car and to arrange the download of the video through a software update."

         "So will you arrest Demona?"

         "We arrested her last night. Meanwhile you are a free man. The longer-term problem here for us is not your angry, psychotic ex-girlfriend. You are incredibly lucky. Your father is the CEO of a major bank with a connection to Mercedes and your girlfriend messed up by crowding the event schedule all into a single day and turning up to watch the show. Unfortunately, we are no closer to identifying the server farm supporting this AI and the physical identities of the perpetrators here. However, we are now more aware of the tricks that these gangster AIs use. Your case has caused us to review a series of back cases and we have begun to find traces of foul play in a series of evidence trails that put previously upstanding citizens in jail. You know people used to laugh at us for having warehouses filled with printouts and physical evidence, they told us it would be more cost-effective to have everything go digital. But all that digitalization has done for us has been to create a whole new set of crimes, real and fabricated."

         "Well let's hear it for the revenge of the non-digital dinosaurs! Thank you." Said Andrew gleefully.

         "Quite," said the Detective offering his hand which both Andrew and his father shook on their way out to freedom.



Notes ▼

W/C: 1997
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PROMPT: October 2024 Prompt: When Technology Goes Wrong

My chatbot is an axe murderer. There, I said it. No, don't hang up on me, dammit, like the local police did. Don't you have people for this kind of thing, a Mulder and Scully for AI and whatnot? I heard what I heard and I saw what I saw. No, a chatbot can't pick up an axe, but you just can't trust those new VR goggles the firefighters are using, and when there's love involved - even the strangest things can happen. But I'm mixing the whole story up. Here's how it started....