Murder by Pixel
2022 novelette by S. L. Huang
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"Murder by Pixel: Crime and Responsibility in the Digital Darkness" is a 2022 science fiction short story by S. L. Huang, about chatbots. It was first published in Clarkesworld Magazine.
Synopsis
Rather than being a standard narrative, the story is presented as a work of investigative journalism, exploring the case of "Sylvie", an autonomous chatbot who has cyberbullied several people into suicide.
Reception
"Murder by Pixel" was a finalist for the Nebula Award for Best Novelette of 2022,[1] the 2023 Hugo Award for Best Novelette,[2] and the 2023 Ignyte Award for Outstanding Novelette.[3]
Locus called it "a skeleton of a story that exists to support a significant amount of real-world research", but emphasized that it is "[a]n intense and interesting look at a critical issue."[4] Tangent Online noted that "nothing in the premise is beyond today's computer technology", and stated that although "[t]he topic is an important one (...) there seems to be no good reason to present it as a lightly fictionalized work rather than as nonfiction."[5]