Designer Creates Tool That Slows Down AI Chatbots

What if the best way to fight AI overload wasn't to ban it, but to make it so annoying you'd think twice before using it?

Sam Lavigne, an assistant professor at Parsons School of Design, just released "Slow LLM," a free browser extension with one simple job: make AI chatbots unbearably slow. Instead of getting instant answers from ChatGPT, users now wait 30 agonizing seconds for responses to simple questions like "What day is it?"

It sounds absurd, but Lavigne has a point. He asks whether we're experiencing "LLM-induced psychosis" or participating in a "massive de-skilling event" by outsourcing our thinking to autocomplete technology.

The tool joins a growing movement of digital protest art. Other recent projects include "Your AI slop bores me," a human-powered chatbot that pushes back against AI-generated content, and "Slop Evader," which removes AI summaries from search results.

Lavigne has been making friction-adding tools for years. His previous creations include "Zoom Escaper," which helps you fake technical difficulties to leave meetings, and "Slow Hot Computer," which does exactly what it sounds like. He even created an email service that floods your inbox with all 225,000 emails from the infamous Enron scandal in chronological order.

The Bright Side

These tiny acts of digital sabotage aren't trying to stop AI's march forward. Instead, they're gentle reminders to pause and think about what we might be losing when we automate everything.

Lavigne explains his mission simply: "I became interested in exploring ways to disrupt their usage, either as something that people might wish to do to themselves, or as a kindness to others."

By making AI chatbots deliberately terrible, Slow LLM gives users a chance to rediscover something valuable: the time and mental space to think for themselves.