Overview
Simon Willison highlights how AI bots are flooding Twitter with generic replies designed to waste users’ time. He discovered that this category of software is formally called “reply guy” tools.
Key Points
- AI bots are posting generic, banal commentary on tweets - creating a new form of digital pollution
- These bots ask meaningless questions after their replies - deliberately designed to waste your time and drive fake engagement
- The software category is officially called “reply guy” tools - giving a name to this emerging problem of automated social media manipulation