More and more phd applications emails that appear to be written by AI... how impressed they are by X paper which [insert plausible if you had no clue about the paper explanation]. Moving on to... I propose research in [entirely unrelated area to paper or my expertise] 1/2

2/2 I've always felt a courtesy to respond, imaging a wanna be PhD student getting a zillion non-answers to their scattergun emails (who advised this as a strategy!?), but it's now getting ridiculous, with practically emails every day. I think my sense of empathic responsibility to reply must go.