"Cat Pictures Please" is a 2015 science fiction short story by American writer Naomi Kritzer.
When an artificial intelligence spontaneously emerges from the systems that run a search engine, it realizes that it wants two things: firstly, it wants to secretly help humans, and secondly, it wants to look at pictures of cats.
[3] Lois Tilton called it "amusing" and "lite", but emphasized "how easily good intentions can backfire",[4] while Apex Magazine's Charlotte Ashley commended the AI's "warm, human voice" and "fundamental sense of goodwill", but faulted Kritzer for portraying it as "improbably US-centric" and for ignoring larger problems in the world.
[5] In 2017, Kritzer announced that she was writing a full-length novel based on the premise.
[6] The novel, Catfishing on CatNet, was published with Tor Teen in 2019.