Attack of the AI Bimbots

I learned something on LinkedIn yesterday. A designer named Bart Fish (yes, really) posted that he had discovered a growing number of TikTok accounts that are a) entirely AI generated, and b) spewing fascist propaganda.

I spent precious moments of what remains of my life scrolling conservative TikTok last night hunting for these accounts and, oh boy. If there's a meteor out there with earth's name on it, aiming to take us all out, it can't come fast enough. [1]

To be sure, there are a ton of living/breathing hair-bleaching lip-plumping bimbos out there spouting conservative nonsense in an angry I-just-went-to-TGI Fridays-and-they-refused-to-serve-me-a third-appletini tone of voice. I don't see why we need robots for this job. But here we are.

Here are some tell-tale signs that MAGA TikTok hottie is actually a bimbot:

1. The accounts have names 'real murkins' would have, like Elizabeth May or Kaylen Rae.

2. There's no audio beyond the soundtrack (usually a country western or heavy metal song). The message is in the text superimposed over the image, which allows them to recycle clips with different MAGA screeds about the usual topics — abortion, trans people, Iran, Sydney Sweeney, how fun it is to be racist, and how mean the nonexistent liberals in their comments are being.

3. And, yes, there are misspellings.
   

   

   Not very eagle-eyed, are they?

4. The video clips are all around three seconds long, and consist of a (usually blonde) bimbot staring directly at the 'camera' and then looking away, or tilting her head, or half smiling. Some of the bots have that unnervingly slow blink that says, 'Oh god, she's about to kill me.' [2]

5. The bimbots are attractive in the most generic way possible. They look the way scary post-surgery Mar-a-Lago harpies probably imagine they look.

6. The bot may look slightly different in each clip. That's because the AI tool the creator was using has the memory of an inebriated goldfish. AI video tools can't reproduce the exact same clip two times in a row, which is why you're not seeing a lot of long-form AI video yet.
   

   

   Which Kaylen Rae bimbot is the real Kaylen Rae bimbot?

7. 'She' may ask viewers to do something extremely simple, like drop the name of the state where they live in the comments. Hundreds take the bait. This raises engagement, which TikTok's promotion algorithms eat up like a whale swallowing krill. (Naturally, some dudes try to flirt with her. That works about as well as it would if she were a real hottie.)

8. They claim to be from states like Oklahoma, Florida, or Georgia. Not seeing any California or New York bots in here.

9. Nearly all the videos are 'taken' inside cars, and many of the bots are in the drivers seat. That seems unsafe to me.

10. The bimbot accounts I found had posted less than 20 clips and appear to have started around the same date, which leads me to believe that they're all the work of the same person, who probably looks something like this:

Welcome to the zombie Internet

It's also quite likely a lot of the people commenting on these clips are not people, or at least, not individual people. The formula is pretty simple: Create a bunch of sock puppet accounts, use some to spin up new TikTok identities, use the rest to comment on each video. Rinse and repeat, and let the algorithms do the heavy lifting for you.

It's the same on every social network. The more shameless you are about it, the more you are rewarded. And while both sides can engage in this kind of algo manipulation, conservatives are much better at it — probably because they have no shame.

A search for "liberals on TikTok" just turns up a ton of conservative accounts complaining about liberals on TikTok. I found exactly one bimbot account that appears to express a progressive point of view [3], and I'm 98% certain it's a faux account designed to generate right-wing outrage about how extreme liberals are.

The problem here is the same old problem that has plagued the Internet since its inception: Nobody knows you're a dog. There's no universal way to verify somebody is whom they claim to be, and almost zero consequences for faking it.

This is why conservatives hate content moderation so much — because some Internet communities actually have rules and will boot you if you violate them egregiously enough. But usually there's very little to prevent you from spinning up a new identity and coming back in. And now, of course, conservatives are either buying up these communities or enlisting the billionaires who control them.

The failure to create a mechanism for creating a persistent identity is the Internet's original sin. If we were all held responsible for the things we do and say online, the net would be a much saner, more reasonable place. There would be significantly fewer scams and much less bullshit. There would certainly be less fake news and pure propaganda.

So the asshole who created all of these bimbots can continue to dupe people with this nonsense, and TikTok will do nothing to stop it.

There's never a meteor around when you really need one.

Encountered any interesting bots lately? Share you thoughts in the comments or email me: [email protected].

[1] And of course now my TikTok feed is flooded with this crap. Good thing I spend precisely 0.00001% of my time there.

[2] I actually managed to find one account featuring a beautiful black bimbot, spouting off about Obama and Diddy. How DEI of them.

[3] Also flagged by Bart Fish.