BehaviorsEstablished
Meat Proxy
noun
A person who passes questions to an AI and forwards its answers without reviewing them or contributing their own judgment.
The human relay
You ask a coworker for a recommendation. They paste your question into a chatbot, copy the response, and send it back without working out whether it makes sense. Their name is on the message, but their judgment is missing.
That person is acting as a meat proxy. The label targets the human relay: someone who moves AI output between people while leaving the thinking to the model and the recipient.
I asked for her recommendation and got three pages straight from a chatbot. She's acting as a meat proxy.
Original example written for this dictionary.
What the recipient inherits
The recipient now has to read the answer, check its claims, and decide which parts apply. A message that looks like help can become another piece of work.
Using AI to prepare an answer does not automatically make someone a meat proxy. The distinction is whether they evaluate what they pass on. A quick skim or an “AI wrote this” disclaimer does not, by itself, establish that the answer is reliable. Meaningful review includes checking relevant claims and taking responsibility for the recommendation.
Documented appearances
An essay on Frank Allenby's site, dated March 31, 2026, uses the phrase in a discussion of people relaying chatbot responses. Niklas Gruhn published “Don't be a meat proxy” on August 3, 2026; Simon Willison linked to Gruhn's post that day and later acknowledged Allenby's earlier example.
These are documented appearances of the term, rather than proof of who first coined it.