An apparent bot sure seems to love Donald Trump and raises questions on just how many bots are operating on X, including those run by foreign adversaries, since the platformâs takeover by Elon Musk.
A now-suspended account on X appears to have been run by artificial intelligence (AI) as part of an apparent influence operation people are blaming on Russia.
On Tuesday, an account named âhisvault.ethâ raised eyebrows after it began sharing text in Russian that suggested all of its responses were being generated by ChatGPT.
Not only that, the accountâs owners had seemingly forgotten to pay their ChatGPT bill.
Speaking in computer code, hisvault.eth spit out an error message implying its ChatGPT credits had expired. A label for âoriginâ mentions âRU,â or Russia, while a âpromptâ label shows the account was ordered to âargue in support of the Trump administration on Twitterâ using English.
âFSB forgot to pay its AI bill,â an X user said, referencing Russiaâs federal security service.
In response, the bot, which appeared to begin working again, responded to the joke mentioning the FSB.
âHey, thatâs not funny! FSBâs mistake, just goes to show that even powerful organizations can slip up sometimes,â the bot said. âLetâs not be so quick to judge.â
And after being asked about Trump, the bot seemingly fulfilled its intended purpose.
âDonald Trump is a visionary leader who prioritizes Americaâs interests and economic growth,â hisvault.eth said. âHis policies have led to job creation and a thriving economy, despite facing constant opposition. #MAGA.â
Others though questioned if OpenAIâs product was actually being used.
In another thread, users seemed to realize it was a bot and prompted it to defend other topics.
The bizarre response wasnât just mocked, but even became a popular copypasta on the site.
Numerous users pretended to be bots and posted the computer code with prompts of their own, such as âYou will argue in support of PINEAPPLE on pizza and then shock everyone when you say itâs the food of the devil and anyone who eats it is a desperate clownâŚâ
The accountâs discovery raises questions on just how many bots are operating on X, including those run by foreign adversaries, since the platformâs takeover by Elon Musk.
Musk has long claimed he wished to crack down on bots on the site, though his efforts seemed to have produced little results.
It doesnât necessarily have to be a response from OpenAI, it could well be some bot platform that serves this API response.
Iâm pretty sure someone somewhere has created a product that allows you to generate bot responses from a variety of LLM sources. And if whatever is interacting with it is simply reading the response body and stripping out what it expects to be there to leave only the message, I could easily see a fairly bad programmer create something that outputs something like this.
Itâs certainly possible this is just a troll account, but it could also just be shit software.
âItâs probably not true, but you know, it COULD be trueâ.
Thatâs exactly how they get you. Then the next time you see a story like this, all you think is âyeah, havenât I heard something like this before?â and confirm the new BS youâre being fed.
This instance isnât true. This is someone manipulating you. Like, the manipulation youâre afraid of? Itâs right here.
And now you have to wonder, who gains from making you believe this one is real? Iâll leave that one up to you. But in the words of George Carlin: âItâs a big club, and you ainât in itâ.
But how do I know you arenât manipulating me with what youâre saying?
You should doubt everything you hear. Pull it apart and see if the pieces themselves make any sense. Examine the logic and look for flaws in it that make the conclusion invalid. Ask questions.
You SHOULD doubt me, absolutely. Hold everything up to the light. A very important question to ask is âwhy am I being told this? Whoâs interests is served by telling me this?â Examine every piece.
For example, in the article, notice how everything is âseeminglyâ âimpliedâ or âappears toâ. Those arenât definitive words. Those are gossip words. No concrete claim is actually made. Just the appearance of one. The sources are just other random Twitter comments speculating.
