An artist collected 350+ anonymous handwritten confessions about AI use

[WWEReins19]

San Francisco artist Olivia Tai has spent the past year collecting more than 350 handwritten, anonymous notes about how people actually use AI in their private lives, through a participatory art project called What We Tell AI. It began in September 2025 when Tai set up a DIY confessions booth, a cardboard box and a Sharpie sign reading Confessions Box: Tell Me Your AI Secret, at Mission Dolores Park, then hid nearby waiting for strangers to contribute

One of the very first notes she received set the tone for the whole project, someone wrote that they'd cloned their ex's voice to have a last conversation with him, and that it helped them finally move on. Tai said she felt she instantly understood so much about the writer, their grief, their process, and how they found a kind of closure through technology they either couldn't or wouldn't seek from another person. Subsequent confessions have touched on using AI to navigate dating, workplace conflicts and family relationships, with Tai noting many notes reveal how people use AI specifically to process disputes they're having with other humans, deeply human issues that also raise real questions about how people are increasingly interacting

The project has since gone digital at whatwetellai.com, built with collaborator Arin Pantja, and has drawn submissions from as far as Mexico, Australia and China. Tai, who describes herself as an artist-researcher, says the project isn't about providing answers or urging any specific action, but about prompting self-reflection as society works out new social norms around AI, saying there are all these new norms coming about, and asking which ones people actually want. Curious what people think this kind of anonymous, crowdsourced confession project reveals that a formal research study couldn't, does removing the survey format and academic framing actually get people to be more honest

'Everyone has an AI secret': This artist has spent a year collecting and sharing hundreds of anonymous AI confessionswww.cnbc.com

[Teal Sparrow]

The ex's voice cloning confession is genuinely the kind of story that a formal survey would never surface, people open up completely differently to an anonymous handwritten note in a park than to a structured research questionnaire

[Highland Canopy]

Deeply human issues but also a concerning sign is exactly the right way to hold both truths about this project at once, these confessions are simultaneously touching and a little unsettling depending which one you read