AI Spray

The aerosol canister had appeared on her desk overnight. Probably a prank from one of her colleagues, she thought. Or a student, although she couldn’t imagine any of them having the imagination for something like this.

It looked like a slightly unusual can of air freshener. Or bug spray even. Printed on a green background with a scattering of off-yellow circles, the words “AI SPRAY” stood out in bold lettering, along with “USE WITH CAUTION” in smaller type underneath — the white-outlined text popping against the green and yellow.

Curious, thought Alice as she dumped her bag on the floor and pulled out a sheaf of papers.

She picked the can up and turned it over in her hands. No list of ingredients or the usual illegibly small and improbably long set of instructions on how to use it. Not even a company logo. Just a neat little box on the back warning users: “Do not inhale.”

Slightly nonplussed, Alice returned the canister to the desk and picked up her coffee mug. Something was niggling her about it, though. It wasn’t that she was particularly into AI. But she was pretty vocal about the technology. And especially about how some people were abusing it.

As she slipped a capsule into the coffee machine, she smiled as she recalled last night’s tirade at the local faculty drinking hangout. Everyone in the college had just received this year’s glossy brochure describing how they were “transforming the world as they empower students to thrive in an AI-accelerated future.”

“Poppycock!” she’d declared as she read the Dean’s improbably optimistic foreword. “AI slop that’s good for nothing but the recycling bin. Who even reads this stuff?”

“Donors?” Alesha suggested. Although by the uncertainty in her voice, it was clear that even she wasn’t sure. “Or maybe they’re just writing for other AIs these days. No-one reads anymore, anyway, do they?”

“What we need,” Alice had responded, getting into her two-beers-in stride, “is an ‘AI-be-gone’ device. Something that you simply point at anything made by AI, and it disappears!”

She stopped, coffee mug halfway to her mouth, the memory cascading through her thoughts. Was that it?

Back at her desk, she picked up the canister again. Probably just a can of deodorant with a custom-printed label, she thought. She smiled at the idea of something for preventing unseemly body odors being used to do the same for unseemly AI use.

Then the smile took on a mischievous edge. She fished out a student essay from the papers she’d removed from her bag a few minutes earlier. This’ll teach them, she said to herself. She was pretty sure they were all using AI for their assignments. But of course there was little she could do about it — other than the usual ineffectual reminders to use their brains and not their chatbot.

Alice held the paper up and pressed down the spray cap. Some of her students’ work could do with a little AI-deodorizing, she felt.

Gobsmacked, she watched the text dissolve into nothingness.

Grabbing another paper from the pile, she tried again. This time a few words stayed on the page, the rest disappearing before her eyes. The third one survived a little better, but the fourth was a wipe out.

Her smile widened as she searched around for the college brochure. Spray. Gone. Every last word of the Dean’s sanctimonious AI optimism, wiped out. Take that! thought Alice with glee.

Curious now as to how far the AI spray’s reach went, she opened up her laptop and brought up her email. The first message to pop up was from her department Chair: “Dear Alice, I deeply honor you for vulnerably sharing your feelings about this year’s annual review and the sacred place your scholarship holds in your life. Please know that calling your work ‘adequate’ is my fullest, most heartfelt endorsement of your consistent excellence, and not a critique. I’m so excited to hold space with you as we lean into co-creating alignment that even more vibrantly celebrates your impact …”

She aimed the canister at the email and pressed down … and watched the typed words fade away.

Feeling a little light-headed, she tried again. And again. Some emails survived; many did not.

LinkedIn was next — that was a bloodbath, although maybe “bleach bath” was more appropriate.

Then X. And Substack. Even Bluesky. Alice found herself caught up in an intoxicating AI deodorization flow state as she moved from website to website.

There was a knock at the door, momentarily breaking her attention. “Come in,” she said, watching the words begin to fade on a prominent journal’s website.

The door opened and the Dean popped his head around it. “Just wanted to see how you’re doing …” he started to say.

But Alice’s finger was already pressing the cap down on the can, its nozzle no longer pointing at the screen.