BELT, MT — Area realtor Donna Karlsson has reportedly spent 47 hours over the past three weeks attempting to coerce various AI writing tools into generating an honest description of Belt, Montana, a town whose population has dropped 82% since its coal mining heyday.
The trouble began when Karlsson, who operates Belt Creek Realty from a converted 1895 jail cell, decided to modernize her listing descriptions using ChatGPT. Despite feeding the AI accurate data about Belt's 510 residents, 42% pre-1940 housing stock, and the fact that the town's main entertainment options are a bar that changes ownership annually and watching Belt Creek freeze over, the technology insisted on producing copy that described the community as "bustling," "up-and-coming," and "a hidden gem poised for explosive growth."
"I typed in all the real facts," said Karlsson, gesturing at a stack of AI-generated printouts. "Population declining since 1910. Median age 48. Primary industry: remembering when there was coal. But it keeps writing shit about 'young professionals flocking to this trendy mountain enclave.' The last young professional we had moved here in 1987, and he left in 1988."
The AI's most egregious fabrication came when it described Belt's "thriving nightlife scene," apparently extrapolating from the existence of Harvest Moon Brewing Company—a craft brewery that, while excellent, represents 100% of Belt's nightlife and closes at 9 PM.
After exhausting ChatGPT, Claude, and six specialized real estate AI platforms, Karlsson discovered that every system seemed hardcoded to avoid acknowledging municipal decline. When she explicitly prompted one tool to "write a listing for a dying former mining town," it responded with a 200-word essay about Belt's "authentic frontier character" and "unlimited potential for visionary developers."
The situation reached peak absurdity Tuesday when Karlsson's premium AI subscription auto-generated a description claiming Belt featured "convenient access to cultural amenities." The nearest Starbucks is 25 miles away in Great Falls, and the town museum is literally inside the old jail.