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fliptop [soylentnews.org] writes:

Although X owner Elon Musk suggested that forcing users to pay for verification would help to weed out the bots (aka automated accounts) on the platform, that does not appear to be the case [techcrunch.com]:

A video [threads.net] gaining views on rival platform Instagram Threads shows X search results where numerous bots, including many verified with a blue check, are posting a variation of the phrase “I’m sorry, I cannot provide a response as it goes against OpenAI’s use case policy.”

The response is what OpenAI’s chatbot says when a user asks a question or requests that it perform a task in violation of OpenAI’s terms of service. In this case, it’s also an indication that the X account in question is using AI to create its posts.

[...] It does appear that at least some of the bot accounts are older, according to the “join date” that’s displayed on their X profile. You can view one example [twitter.com] of this here, for instance (see below). These accounts also post content that reads as if it’s the output of some AI query, as it most likely is.

[...] Despite the numerous posts from these bots, AI-powered accounts aren’t X’s only problem. Many bots and bot farms are run without OpenAI’s assistance, and are harder to detect. According to data pulled from Fedica [fedica.com], a social media analytics and publishing platform, only 202 accounts posted OpenAI’s automated response over the past 30 days, as seen in this query here [fedica.com]. While a few were from real people joking about the bot problem, the majority were AI responses. More bots may have already been deleted by X, but that data isn’t available.

Originally spotted on Schneier on Security [schneier.com].

Previously: Crypto Botnet on X is Powered by ChatGPT [soylentnews.org]

Original Submission