Thread by @conspirator0

One of the accounts that @DrunkAlexJones was forced to follow by the "Round Year Fun" app is @drago1171, an account created in 2009 with a GAN-generated face pic that follows several other old accounts with GAN-generated face pics. #SaturdayShenaniGANs

cc: @ZellaQuixote

By recursively exploring the followers/followees of these accounts, we found a network of 54 accounts created in 2009 or 2010 with GAN-generated faces. All were dormant from late 2012 until April 2021, when all 54 began tweeting via the Twitter Web App.

Here's an animated visualization of blending all 54 profile pics together, showing the identical facial feature placement that is a fingerprint of GAN-generated pics such as those created by thispersondoesnotexist.com. (GAN = "generative adversarial network", the AI technique used.)

Six of the accounts in the network appear to be gaining followers from accounts compromised by the "Round Year Fun" apps: @xxkyraaxx, @Stephaniebul, @ksapehr, @blue4hate, @Cunixsybase, and the aforementioned @drago1171.

Almost all of this network's recent tweet content is retweets, quote tweets, or replies. The accounts being retweeted/quote tweeted/replied to are mostly large cryptocurrency-themed accounts.

All of the accounts in this network have follow relationships with at least one other member of the network, with most followed by and following multiple other accounts in the network.