A telemarketer named Samantha West who sells health insurance may or may not be a robot, though a straight answer to that question is proving to be difficult. Time has relayed the findings of its in-house probe into the humanity of West, who’s making calls on the behalf of an insurance company based in Ft. Lauderdale that coincidentally has a non-functioning website. Unlike most robotic operators, West creatively dodges questions about whether she’s actually a human, and will try and avoid a straight response to questions that might reveal details of her identity. Time‘s repeated calls to West (which have been posted online) suggest that she — or it — has simply been designed to gather information before passing callers onto a human closer who completes the sale, with callers being none the wiser. You can listen to one such exchange, complete with a creepy laugh, here.
via The Verge