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Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
@conspirator0
Jun 20, 2021 • 10 tweets • 7 min read • Read on X
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Meet @Fernandozi2u, @Itzel2xqry, @Jenniferypvw, @Jensen3eigi, @Maximpxh, and @Raelynq1uo, six accounts with GAN-generated profile pics and identical biographies created in May 2021. #SundayShenaniGANs

cc: @ZellaQuixote
The aforementioned six accounts are part of an astroturf botnet consisting of 2841 similarly-named Twitter accounts with repetitive biographies created in May 2021. These accounts (allegedly) send all of their tweets via Twitter for iPhone.
All 2841 accounts in this network use GAN-generated face pics as their profile images.

(GAN = "generative adversarial network", the AI technique used by thispersondoesnotexist.com and similar tools to generate fake face pics.)
The facial features on GAN-generated face pics always appear in the same pixel position on the images. In an interesting twist, the pics used by this botnet have been shifted down and to the right, but since all were shifted by the same amount, the facial features line up anyway.
Here's an animated visualization of the process of blending the 2841 GAN-generated pics, demonstrating the identical facial feature placement (particularly the eyes).
As is often to be the case with network consisting of large numbers of GAN-generated profile pics, some rather glitchy images have made their way into the dataset. These are some of the more entertaining examples.
What does this botnet actually do? It mostly amplifies large cryptocurrency/blockchain accounts, via both retweets and quote tweets, with some retweets of news and sports tweets (and occasional other things) thrown in for good measure.
In addition to retweeting large cryptocurrency accounts, this botnet also follows them en masse: 16 of the accounts the network amplifies are also followed by at least 90% of the bots in the network.
H/T @EJGibney/@FakeDrSebaceous for the lead.
Typo in the title of the creation date chart - should say 2841 accounts, not 2843.

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More from @conspirator0

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
Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
Sep 8, 2024
Can simple text generation bots keep sophisticated LLM chatbots like ChatGPT engaged indefinitely? The answer is yes, which has some potentially interesting implications for distinguishing between conversational chatbots and humans.

cc: @ZellaQuixote
conspirator0.substack.com/p/baiting-the-…
screenshot of Substack post
For this experiment, four simple chatbots were created:

• a bot that asks the same question over and over
• a bot that replies with random fragments of a work of fiction
• a bot that asks randomly generated questions
• a bot that repeatedly asks "what do you mean by <X>?"
The output of these chatbots was used as input to an LLM chatbot based on the 8B version of the Llama 3.1 model. Three of the four bots were successful at engaging the LLM chatbot in a 1000-message exchange; the only one that failed was the repetitive question bot.


screenshots of portions of the conversation between the repetitive cheeseburger bot and the LLM bot
screenshots of portions of the conversation between the Star Trek bot and the LLM bot
screenshots of portions of the conversation between the random question bot and the LLM bot
screenshots of portions of the conversation between the "what do you mean" bot and the LLM bot
Read 5 tweets
Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
Sep 3, 2024
The spammers behind the "Barndominium Gallery" Facebook page have branched out into AI-generated video and started a YouTube channel with the catchy name "AY CUSTOM HOME". The results are just about as craptastic as you'd expect.

cc: @ZellaQuixote
screenshot of the AY CUSTOM HOME Youtube channel
In this synthetically generated aerial video of a (nonexistent) barndominium under construction, the geometry of the roof changes, a blue building appears, and a tree vanishes, all in the course of just three seconds. still images from two different points in an AY CUSTOM HOME YouTube video, showing multiple impossible changes over the course of a few seconds
This AI-generated barndominium features a long AI-generated porch with some chairs on it. Exactly how many chairs there are depends on what angle you look at it from, however, as the chair on the left splits into three chairs as the camera pans. still images from two different points in an AY CUSTOM HOME YouTube video, showing multiple impossible changes over the course of a few seconds
Read 4 tweets

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