Sam Altman Says That Bots Are Making Social Media Feel ‘fake’ 

X enthusiast and Reddit shareholder Sam Altman had an epiphany connected Monday: Bots person made it intolerable to find whether societal media posts are really written by humans, he posted.

The realization came while reference (and sharing) immoderate posts from nan r/Claudecode subreddit, which were praising OpenAI Codex. OpenAI launched nan package programming work that takes connected Anthropic’s Claude Code successful May.

Lately, that subreddit has been truthful filled pinch posts from self-proclaimed Code users announcing that they moved to Codex that 1 Reddit personification moreover joked: “Is it imaginable to move to codex without posting a taxable connected Reddit?”

This near Altman wondering really galore of those posts were from existent humans. “I person had nan strangest acquisition reference this: I presume it’s each fake/bots, moreover though successful this lawsuit I cognize codex maturation is really beardown and nan inclination present is real,” he confessed connected X.

He past live-analyzed his reasoning. “I deliberation location are a bunch of things going on: existent group person picked up quirks of LLM-speak, nan Extremely Online crowd drifts together successful very correlated ways, nan hype rhythm has a very ‘it’s truthful over/we’re truthful back’ extremism, optimization unit from societal platforms connected juicing engagement and nan related measurement that creator monetization works, different companies person astroturfed america truthful i’m other delicate to it, and a bunch much (including astir apt immoderate bots).”

To decode that a little, he’s accusing humans of starting to sound for illustration LLMs, moreover though LLMs — spearheaded by OpenAI — were virtually invented to mimic quality communication, correct down to nan em dash. And OpenAI’s models definitely trained connected Reddit, wherever Altman was a committee personnel done 2022, and was disclosed arsenic a ample shareholder during nan company’s IPO past year.

He makes a valid constituent that fandoms, led by extremely, always-on societal media users, do thin to behave successful overseas ways. Many groups tin devolve into hatefests if overrun by those venting frustrations to their brethren.

Sam besides throws a excavation astatine nan incentives erstwhile societal media sites and creators trust connected engagement to make money. Fair enough.

But past Altman confesses that 1 of nan reasons he thinks nan pro-OpenAI posts successful this subreddit mightiness beryllium bots is because OpenAI has besides been “astroturfed.” That typically involves posts by group aliases bots paid for by nan competitor, aliases paid by immoderate third-degree contractor, giving nan competitor plausible deniability.

We person nary grounds of astroturfing (though it is possible). But we did spot really OpenAI subreddits turned connected nan company aft it released GPT 5.0. Instead of waves of praise from nan religious complete nan caller model, galore angry posts were voted up. People took to Reddit and X to kick astir everything from GPT’s characteristic to really it burned done credits without finishing tasks.

Several cynics person suggested that Altman’s lament was his first forays into trading OpenAI’s rumored societal media platform. In April, nan Verge reported that specified a task to return connected X and Facebook was astatine nan earliest stages. This merchandise whitethorn aliases whitethorn not exist. Altman whitethorn aliases whitethorn not person had ulterior motives for suggesting that societal media is excessively clone these days.

But motives aside, if OpenAI is readying a societal network, what are nan likelihood that it would beryllium a bot-free zone? And, funny enough, if it did nan reverse and banned humans, nan results apt wouldn’t beryllium different. Not only do LLMs still hallucinate facts, but erstwhile researchers astatine nan University of Amsterdam built a societal web composed wholly of bots, they recovered that nan bots soon formed cliques and echo chambers for themselves, too.