OpenAI Boss Sam Altman Says Bot Makes Social Media Look Fake

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (photo: account X @sama)

JAKARTA OpenAI CEO Sam Altman doesn't like the presence of bots. According to him, bots make it difficult for him and most people to distinguish original human-made posts or machines.

This statement was made after Altman read a number of uploads on the r/men'scode subreddit. The subreddit was filled with posts praising OpenAI Codex, a software programming service product launched by OpenAI.

This praise was not responded well. On the other hand, Altman actually wondered how many posts were written original by humans. Although Altman is aware of Codex being popular, he assumes that all praise posts are fake.

"I had a very strange experience reading this: I assume everything is fake/bot, although in this case I know your growth is very fast and the trend is real," wrote Altman via his X account.

However, Altman tried to dispel the thought. Although the statements of the people at Reddit looked strange, Altman tried to think that, "Real people have adopted the habit of speaking (such as) LM (Big Language Model)."

The OpenAI founder admitted that he became more sensitive to posts that sound like bots on social media. This happened because OpenAI had been the target of astrative or paid promotions by competitors.

This promotion involves using bots or fictitious accounts to spread certain narratives. This also causes losses. Not only to the company, but also to users of the platform.

"The end effect is that somehow AI Twitter / AI Reddit felt very fake, something that didn't feel a year or two ago," said Altman. However, Altman's view is in accordance with the current situation.

Along with the massive development of technology, it is difficult to know how many posts were written by bots. Data security companies such as Imperva report that more than half of internet traffic in 2024 comes from non-humans.

Even Grok, X's Artificial Intelligence (AI) bot, says that there are hundreds of millions of bots on the platform. This reinforces Altman's suspicion that the existence of bots has significantly changed the social media landscape.