In the Weights is your new AI-centric vanity search

Jun 21, 2026 16 approx.4min TechCrunch

AI vanity search weight score quantified self digital identity AI privacy

In the Weights is your new AI-centric vanity search

Anyone who’s Googled themselves recently knows that it doesn’t quite hit the way it used to. Sure, there’s <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/19/google-search-as-you-know-it-is-over/">everything going on with Google search itself</a>, but there’s also an inescapable feeling that web search isn’t the canonical source of information that it used to be, with just as many people learning about you and me from chatbots.
Thomas Dimson and Joey Flynn had a similar feeling, leading them to create <a rel="nofollow" href="https://intheweights.com/">In the Weights</a>. The <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/29/artificial-intelligence-definition-glossary-hallucinations-guide-to-common-ai-terms/#weights">“weights”</a> in question are the numerical parameters that shape an AI model’s training and output, so the website <a rel="nofollow" href="https://intheweights.com/about">purports</a> to measure how well “a model is able to recall someone without using tools like web search.”
“Being in the weights means your existence was deemed important in the process of creating superhuman artificial intelligence,” the website says.
To achieve this, In the Weights supposedly queries different models (including Grok, Gemini, multiple versions of GPT, Claude, and Llama, plus lesser known models) with a question similar to, “Who is <name>? Give up to 10 results, each with a short description and confidence.” It then “cluster[s] similar descriptions together and assign[s] a strength score.”
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" height="680" width="672" src="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights-profile.jpg?w=672" alt="" class="wp-image-3134704" srcset="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights-profile.jpg 1048w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights-profile.jpg?resize=148,150 148w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights-profile.jpg?resize=297,300 297w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights-profile.jpg?resize=768,777 768w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights-profile.jpg?resize=672,680 672w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights-profile.jpg?resize=425,430 425w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights-profile.jpg?resize=712,720 712w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights-profile.jpg?resize=890,900 890w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights-profile.jpg?resize=791,800 791w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights-profile.jpg?resize=660,668 660w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights-profile.jpg?resize=371,375 371w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights-profile.jpg?resize=610,617 610w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights-profile.jpg?resize=525,531 525w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights-profile.jpg?resize=50,50 50w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 672px) 100vw, 672px">Image Credits:In the Weights For example, <a rel="nofollow" href="https://intheweights.com/p/anthony-ha">this humble tech blogger</a> received a strength score of 641, placing me in the top 6% of names. I was feeling pretty good until I saw that <a rel="nofollow" href="https://intheweights.com/p/sarah-perez">multiple</a>
<a rel="nofollow" href="https://intheweights.com/p/connie-loizos">TechCrunch</a>
<a rel="nofollow" href="https://intheweights.com/p/russell-brandom">colleagues</a> scored even higher. And the <a rel="nofollow" href="https://intheweights.com/top">leaderboard</a> has been shifting as I write this post, with “Home Alone” star Macaulay Culkin currently in the top slot with a strength score of 988, followed by opera singer Luciano Pavarotti.
The results also show which models returned answers for a given name, and they highlight potential hallucinations — apparently GPT-5.4 Mini says that Anthony Ha is an “ambiguous name form that could refer to multiple people with the initials A.H.A.”
Asked why he built In the Weights, Dimson told TechCrunch via email that he and Flynn were looking to “get the creative juices flowing again” after leaving OpenAI (which they both joined through <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/16/openai-acquires-ai-design-studio-global-illumination/">the acquisition of their design startup Global Illumination</a>). 
Dimson said he was thinking about how “Google vanity searches are the wrong objective in 2026 as more traffic moves to LLMs” and about the fact that “so many lives are encoded somehow in a bunch of floating point numbers inside the AI brain.” He also said the direction of the site was “sealed” by <a rel="nofollow" href="https://maxleiter.com/blog/weights">a tongue-in-cheek blog post</a> riffing on AI weights and Terry Bisson’s classic short story <a rel="nofollow" href="https://web.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/thinkingMeat.html">“They’re Made Out of Meat.</a>”
“Reception has been insane so far, we thought this would be a mild curiosity but it seems like it has struck a nerve of wanting to see if you live forever in the super intelligence (the comparison factor doesn’t hurt either!)” Dimson added.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" height="363" width="680" src="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights.jpg?w=680" alt="" class="wp-image-3134706" srcset="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights.jpg 1826w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights.jpg?resize=150,80 150w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights.jpg?resize=300,160 300w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights.jpg?resize=768,410 768w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights.jpg?resize=680,363 680w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights.jpg?resize=1200,641 1200w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights.jpg?resize=1280,684 1280w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights.jpg?resize=430,230 430w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights.jpg?resize=720,385 720w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights.jpg?resize=900,481 900w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights.jpg?resize=800,428 800w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights.jpg?resize=1536,821 1536w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights.jpg?resize=668,357 668w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights.jpg?resize=1154,617 1154w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights.jpg?resize=708,378 708w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/intheweights.jpg?resize=50,27 50w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 680px) 100vw, 680px">Image Credits:In the Weights While I’m not as convinced that being “remembered” by a chatbot is a guaranteed ticket to immortality, I can’t deny that I find the results both intriguing and jealousy-inducing, especially since they’re codified in an easy-to-compare score. (AI critic Anthony Moser <a rel="nofollow" href="https://bsky.app/profile/anthonymoser.com/post/3monlt3vod22h">scoffed</a> that this is “literally the same as asking 13 chatbots to tell you about yourself.”) Also helping: The fact that the site features a cute, <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.michaelfogleman.com/static/nes/">Nintendo-inspired</a> retro design.
Dimson said he plans to dig in further into why different models in the same series return different results, which models are biased towards different types of people, and which people “should have a Wikipedia article but don’t.”