Your friend asked you a question. Don’t copy and paste an answer from a Chatbot
Back in 2010s, a website called Let me Google this for you It gained a remarkable amount of popularity for serving one purpose: snark.
The site allows you to create a custom link that you can send to someone who asks you a question. When they click on the link, an animation of the process of typing a question into Google plays. The idea is to show the person asking the question how easy it is to find the answer themselves.
It’s basically an insult. He’s funny and sassy.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with a little rudeness in the right context. If an overtly hostile person is wasting your time on social media by asking easily researched questions, I think you should go ahead and enjoy a little passive aggression (as a bonus).
However, in personal contexts, using Let Me Google That For You clearly indicates that you don’t respect the person you gave the link to, and asking them is a waste of your time. If someone from your workplace or personal life asks you a question, it’s because they want to Your specified inputSo it’s better to just provide the answer – and ideally with context that only you can provide – rather than send a link to a Google search results page.
Now, this is 2025, people are behind them Let me Google this for you We also offer Let me ChatGPT this for youwhich works exactly the way you think it works. Its presence suggests something new: how rude it is to answer a question using AI output — especially in a more professional context.
Wasting time
Someone telling Google something might be funny and satisfying, but it’s not cooperating. I would put copying and pasting or screenshotting a conversation with ChatGPT, Claude or any other AI agent in the same category: not helpful and kind of rude.
Developer Alex Martsinovich touched on this a while ago in a blog post called It is rude to show people the output of artificial intelligence“Be polite, and don’t text humans with AI,” he writes. “My own view on AI etiquette is that AI outputs can only be transferred if they are certified as your own or there is explicit consent from the receiving party.” I think this is a very good framework for AI etiquette.
If someone asks you a question, when they could have asked the machine instead, it’s because they wanted to for you point of view. The Internet exists, at least in theory, so that humans can communicate with each other, and so that we can benefit from each other’s knowledge. Answering a question using AI output ignores this dynamic, especially if you don’t say that’s what you’re doing.