The job market is a nightmare right now. Of course, companies are finding new and exciting ways to make it much worse. For instance, there was a time when prepping for a job interview meant looking presentable while workshopping a way to praise yourself when answering the age-old question: what’s your greatest weakness?Things have changed.Most interviews are conducted on Zoom, which removes a layer of human connection. Now, thanks to the explosion of AI, there’s a good chance an actual human being won’t even interview you. A report from Fortune details the demoralizing modern corporate trend of AI interviewers, blank-eyed AI agents with a weirdly sultry cartoon face and a monotone voice asking where you see yourself in five years.AI Interviewers Are Making the Job Market That Much WorseUnemployed people, when speaking to Fortune, would rather—and have—passed on jobs to avoid subjecting themselves to the humiliation of being interviewed by an algorithm. To them, being grilled by software is a dystopian and insulting experience.“Looking for a job right now is so demoralizing and soul-sucking that to submit yourself to that added indignity is just a step too far,” writer Debra Borchardt told Fortune, who could immediately tell the interviewer was not a real human being. “And that’s when it got a little weird,” she said.Tons of job seekers, already exhausted by ghosting and application portals that feel more like black holes, are drawing the line at software masquerading as hiring managers.Why Is This Happening?There are two sides to every story, and on the other side of this one, you have overworked HR teams, for whom AI is a godsend. For companies fielding thousands of applications for entry-level roles, AI is a necessity for basic survival. Bots are handling the first-round grunt work: reading résumés, asking standardized questions, and sorting applicants into groups algorithmically. This, HR claims, frees up time for humans to do actual hiring later on.The plight of the HR worker isn’t enough to move candidates who feel disrespected at every turn, such as Allen Rausch, a laid-off technical writer who endured three separate interviews with robotic avatars that couldn’t even answer basic questions about company culture. Or Alex Cobb, who bailed on an application the second he detected AI. “It makes me question the culture of the company—are they going to cut jobs in the future because they’ve learned robots can already recruit people? What else will they outsource that to do?” Codd told Fortune.And he’s correct.An already demoralizing process word feels like your tossing your life’s work into avoid with nary an email so much as confirming a company has received your application is now being doubled down upon by a lot of companies, forcing applicants who have worked too hard and spent way too much money on degrees just to get tossed questions by a glorified answering machine.Companies are always looking for ways to cut corners, especially now that Trump’s tariffs have stalled the job market and the economy, grinding gears to a halt. The gears were finally starting to chug forward after the pandemic slowed everything down. Unfortunately, AI interviews are probably the future of the job-hunting process. But you should probably use them as much of a litmus test as they are for you.If you think you’re speaking to an AI agent, it’s probably better to bail because that is one small sign of company-wide philosophy that doesn’t regard actual flesh and blood human beings with the respect and dignity they deserve.The post The Job Market Sucks Right Now—and AI Interviewers Are Making It Worse appeared first on VICE.