It\u2019s customary to leave this note until the middle or end of an article, but Gizmodo reached out to representatives of Zach Braff twice for interviews about his use of AI generally: once on December 15 of last year, and then again yesterday. Both requests were denied.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Scrubs star Zach Braff posted a Story to his Instagram account (archived by Megh Wright of Vulture<\/a>) with the following text:<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not dating a chatbot.<\/p>\n I can\u2019t believe I have to type these words.<\/p>\n It is a storyline in an upcoming ep of Scrubs.<\/p>\n Maybe it came from that?<\/p>\n Not sure.<\/p>\n But not me.<\/p>\n Love,<\/p>\n The guy not dating his chatbot.<\/p>\n Please update all gossip sites.\u201d<\/p>\n Braff\u2019s Story posts on Thursday were more than a denial. They were an ostensible appeal for decency from fellow showbiz types Max Silvestri, Jenny Slate, Gabe Liedman, and Kumail Nanjiani, who on December 18\u2014three days after Gizmodo had reached out to Braff\u2019s representatives\u2014had tittered to one another in a podcast segment<\/a> about an unnamed major actor who was rumored to be romantically involved with an AI chatbot. The anonymous actor in question was supposedly so bold about his relationship that he was interacting with the chatbot in front of others.<\/p>\n As documented in Wright\u2019s post for Vulture, the rumor had flared up and died down last year, but a repost of the Silvestri-Slate-Liedman-Nanjiani clip popped up on the gossip account DeuxMoi earlier this month, and appears to have been the fresh spark of interest that triggered Braff\u2019s denial.<\/p>\n \u201cAlso I had no idea until tonight (because I\u2019m not on TikTok) that these folks were the origin of this?\u201d Braff wrote in an additional Story post, along with, \u201cI feel like now is a good time to be kind to people.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n If the denial was intended to make the topic go away, then its safe to say the consequences have been downright perverse for Braff. His denial of romantic involvement with an AI chatbot has now been covered by:<\/p>\n Plus Vulture, and now Gizmodo.<\/p>\n Commenters online<\/a> have questioned the wisdom<\/a> of his choice to address the rumor at all given that it was anonymous. Wright of Vulture pointed out that Braff calling himself \u201cThe guy not dating his chatbot\u201d could be seen as an unnecessarily intriguing choice when he could have simply said \u201cguy not dating a chatbot.\u201d<\/p>\n 12 years ago, during another uncomfortable time online for Braff\u2014that one caused by the surprising amount of controversy over his decision to use Kickstarter to help fund his 2014 movie Wish I Was Here\u2014the star sat for a Q&A with a YouTube documentarian. It wasn\u2019t an especially hard-hitting interview, but some of his statements are worth reading in the present context:<\/p>\n . <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m on Twitter, and they\u2019re going \u2018You read the comments?\u2019 and I was like \u2018You don\u2019t?\u2019 and I realized some people just post s\u2014 and they don\u2019t engage. I actually love engaging with my fan base and they know that they\u2019re smart. They\u2019re not idiots. They like it. It\u2019s a conversation. It\u2019s not me saying \u2018Hey check out my new makeup line,\u2019 and so people can smell b\u2014\u2014- a mile away. Look what happened when Morgan Freeman did that AMA on Reddit<\/a>. I don\u2019t know if people followed that, but there was a huge backlash because it was so clearly a film publicist just writing answers for Morgan Freeman, whereas my AMAs, um, I don\u2019t hold anything back. Ask me\u2026It\u2019s called \u2018Ask Me Anything.\u2019 Ask me anything. I\u2019ll answer it.\u201d<\/p>\n Even with this in mind, I am not holding my breath for Zach Braff to do a Reddit AMA right now. If he did, I would read it with great interest.<\/p>\n