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Conspirador Norteño

@conspirator0

Oct 12, 2021 • 10 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X

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@ZellaQuixote

The bots described in this previous thread have been banned, but a new batch of accounts with GAN-generated face pics and screenshots of fake Elon Musk tweets has arisen to replace them.
#ThisPersonDoesNotExistAndNeitherDoesThisElonMuskTweet

cc: @ZellaQuixote

https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1413274111653158914

The new incarnation of the network consists of (at least) 128 accounts created between August 18th and October 10th 2020. All tweet exclusively via the Twitter Web App (allegedly), and all their tweets to date are either replies or retweets.

The network's replies fall into three categories:

• replies containing screenshots fake Elon Musk tweets advertising watches and random text
• replies consisting entirely of random text
• repetitive replies containing images

@EJGibney

The screenshots of fake Elon Musk tweets hawking watches are associated with an ongoing scam involving shady websites that supposdely sell the watches in question. More details in this thread from @EJGibney:

https://twitter.com/EJGibney/status/1414613263879389187

Who does this network retweet and reply to? Mostly large verified sports and news accounts, with a few exceptions. The same is true of the accounts the bots in the network follow as well (although there's a bit more variety).

All 128 accounts in this network use GAN-generated face pics, similar to those generated by thispersondoesnotexist.com.

(GAN = "generative adversarial network", the AI technique used to generate the images)

The current generation of GAN-generated face pics always have the major facial features (particularly the eyes) at the same pixel position in the image. This becomes apparent when one blends the profile images used by the botnet.

With only 128 accounts, you'd think the operators of this network would've actually looked at the AI-generated face pics they used, but some really glitchy ones nonetheless made their way into the batch.

https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1322704400226394112

More information on GAN-generated images (mostly fake faces) and their use on social media (mostly Twitter) in this thread of threads:

https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1322704400226394112

As with the previous incarnation of this botnet, these accounts are periodically deleting their media tweets (most of which are replies with the fake Elon Musk tweet screenshots).

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More from @conspirator0

Conspirador Norteño

@conspirator0

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

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.)

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.

Read 5 tweets

Conspirador Norteño

@conspirator0

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

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.

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.

Read 7 tweets

Conspirador Norteño

@conspirator0

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

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.

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.

Read 8 tweets

Conspirador Norteño

@conspirator0

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

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.

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

@conspirator0

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

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.

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.

Read 7 tweets

Conspirador Norteño

@conspirator0

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-…

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.