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Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
@conspirator0
Apr 29, 2021 • 10 tweets • 7 min read • Read on X
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Are these spammy replies from accounts with cat avatars some mysterious form of feline communication? Nope, it's another botnet, and the cats are fake (GAN-generated, similar to those produced by thiscatdoesnotexist.com).

cc: @ZellaQuixote
The reply spammers with the GAN-generated cat pics follow a bunch of other accounts with GAN-generated cat avatars, as well as GAN-generated human face pics and anime pics (and some other things), all with similar follow stats and all created in April 2021.
By recursively exploring the follow relationships of the initial group of accounts, we found 5007 accounts that we believe to be part of the botnet, created in batches between April 2nd and April 27th, 2021.
To date, only 1226 of the 5007 accounts in this network have tweeted. Almost all tweets are repetitive replies consisting of nonsensical strings of letters. They mostly reply to porn accounts (porn is also what they retweet on the rare occasions that they retweet something).
This network uses 3 different types of GAN-generated profile pic (GAN = "generative adversarial network, the AI technology used to produce the images):

• 681 human faces (thispersondoesnotexist.com)
• 660 cats (thiscatdoesnotexist.com)
• 656 anime pics (thiswaifudoesnotexist.com)
543 of the accounts in the network use the default profile pic. The remaining 2467 of the accounts use a variety of images, most of which are repeated across multiple accounts (the collage shows some examples).
The GAN-generated human face pics have the telltale trait that the major facial feature (particularly the eyes) are in the same pixel position on each image. This becomes apparent when one blends all the images together, as in this video:
For more information on detecting the various types of GAN-generated pics, here is a trio of threads:

• faces
• cats
• anime
Finally, we suspect that this is at least the third incarnation we've seen of this particular botnet. Analyses of the previous two:


Typo in one o the tweets in this thread (missing quote mark) - first sentence should read:

This network uses 3 different types of GAN-generated profile pic (GAN = "generative adversarial network", the AI technology used to produce the images):

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More from @conspirator0

Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
Apr 26
Does thanking, praising, or insulting an LLM-based chatbot affect the speed or accuracy of its responses to questions involving basic arithmetic? Let's find out!

cc: @ZellaQuixote
conspirator0.com/p/how-to-talk-…
For this experiment, Meta’s Llama 3.1 model was asked to add and multiply random numbers between 10 and 100, with six different wordings: polite, rude, obsequious, urgent, and short and long neutral forms. Each combination of math operation and wording was tested 1000 times. image containing 24 math questions with a bunch of robots in the background
Results: asking the questions neutrally yielded a faster response than asking politely, rudely, obsequiously, or urgently, even if the neutral prompt was longer. Overall, obsequious math questions took the longest to process, followed by urgent, rude, and polite questions. bar charts showing the average processing time for addition and multiplication problems asked with six different phrasings
Read 6 tweets
Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
Mar 8
Just for fun, I decided to search Amazon for books about cryptocurrency a couple days ago. The first result that popped up was a sponsored listing for a book series by an "author" with a GAN-generated face, "Scott Jenkins".

cc: @ZellaQuixote sponsored Amazon listing for the "Crypto Essentials" series by "Scott Jenkins", an author with a GAN-generated face>
screenshot of the About the Author page for "Scott Jenkins"
Alleged author "Scott Jenkins" is allegedly published by publishing company Tigress Publishing, which also publishes two other authors with GAN-generated faces, "Morgan Reid" and "Susan Jeffries". (A fourth author uses a photo of unknown origin.) screenshots of the About the Author pages for "Morgan Reid" and "Susan Jeffries"
list of books by "Scott Jenkins" on the Tigress Publishing website
list of books by "Morgan Reid" on the Tigress Publishing website
Image
As is the case with all unmodified StyleGAN-generated faces, the facial feature positioning is extremely consistent between the three alleged author images. This becomes obvious when the images are blended together. all three GAN-generated faces blended together
Read 5 tweets
Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
Feb 8
The people in these Facebook posts have been carving intricate wooden sculptures and baking massive loaves of bread shaped like bunnies, but nobody appreciates their work. That's not surprising, since both the "people" and their "work" are AI-generated images.

cc: @ZellaQuixote three Facebook posts featuring AI-generated images of various large sculpted items: a loaf of bread shaped like a rabbit, and wooden sculptures shaped like a deer and an eagle
In the last several days, Facebook's algorithm has served me posts of this sort from 18 different accounts that recycle many of the same AI-generated images. Six of these accounts have been renamed at least once. collage of 18 Facebook profiles
Page Transparency info for six of the pages
The AI-generated images posted by these accounts include the aforementioned sculptures, sad birthdays, soldiers holding up cardboard signs with spelling errors, and farm scenes.

The common element: some sort of emotional appeal to real humans viewing the content. three Facebook posts featuring AI-generated images of various large sculpted items: a loaf of bread shaped like a rabbit, and wooden sculptures shaped like a deer and an eagle
three Facebook posts featuring AI-generated images of people holding birthday cakes
three Facebook posts featuring AI-generated images of soldiers holding cardboard signs with spelling errors
three Facebook posts featuring AI-generated images of people holding freshly picked produce
Read 7 tweets
Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
Jan 24
As Bluesky approaches 30 million users, people who run spam-for-hire operations are taking note. Here's a look at a network of fake Bluesky accounts associated with a spam operation that provides fake followers for multiple platforms.

cc: @ZellaQuixote screenshots of 12 Bluesky accounts with the biography "Praticante de esportes radicais"
This fake follower network consists of 8070 Bluesky accounts created between Nov 30 and Dec 30, 2024. None has posted, although some have reposted here and there. Almost all of their biographies are in Portuguese, with the exception of a few whose biographies only contain emoji. hourly creation volume chart for the 8070 accounts in the spam network
table of 30 example spam accounts
The accounts in this fake follower network use a variety of repeated or otherwise formulaic biographies, some of which are repeated dozens or hundred of times. Some of the biographies begin with unnecessary leading commas, and a few consist entirely of punctuation. table of biographies most frequently used by the network
screenshots of six accounts with malformed biographies
Read 8 tweets
Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
Jan 10
It's presently unclear why, but over the past year someone has created a network of fake Facebook accounts pretending to be employees of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Many of the accounts in this network have GAN-generated faces.

cc: @ZellaQuixote Screenshots of the profiles of 12 fake LA Dodger employee Facebook accounts
This network consists of (at least) 80 Facebook accounts, 48 of which use StyleGAN-generated faces as profile images. The remaining 32 all use the same image, a real photograph of a random person sitting in an office. collage of 48 GAN-generated faces used as profile images by the fake accounts
collage of 32 identical photos used as profile images by the fake accounts
As is the case with all unmodified StyleGAN-generated faces, the main facial features (especially the eyes) are in the same position on all 48 AI-generated faces used by the network. This anomaly becomes obvious when the faces are blended together.
Read 6 tweets
Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
Oct 18, 2024
None of these chefs exist, as they're all AI-generated images. This hasn't stopped them from racking up lots of engagement on Facebook by posting AI-generated images of food (and occasional thoughts and prayers), however.

cc: @ZellaQuixote collage of 11 AI-generated images of chefs, presently being used as the avatars of Facebook accounts
These "chefs" are part of a network of 18 Facebook pages with names like "Cook Fastly" and "Emily Recipes" that continually post AI-generated images of food. While many of these pages claim to be US-based, they are have admins in Morocco per Facebook's Page Transparency feature. collage of the profiles of 18 Facebook "chef" pages that post AI-generated images of food
screenshots of Facebook page transparency info showing that the pages are run from Morocco
Between them, these 18 Facebook "chef" pages have posted AI-generated images of food at least 36,000 times in the last five months. Not all of the images are unique; many have been posted repeatedly, sometimes by more than one of the alleged chefs. examples of AI-generated food images posted by the Facebook spam pages
examples of AI-generated food images posted by more than one Facebook spam page
Read 7 tweets

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