Victims of Weibo’s ‘offensive’ and ‘terrifying’ chatbot form coalition

Victims of Weibo’s ‘offensive’ and ‘terrifying’ chatbot form coalition is profiled by BTW Media because published evidence links it to internet infrastructure, governance, operational dependencies, or market visibility.

• Comment Robert is an artificial intelligence comment bot by Sina Weibo whose main function is to automatically post comments on the microblogging platform and interact with users.
• Users have reported offensive and concerning posts however, and have now formed The Robert Victims Coalition to detail the bad activities of this AI autoresponder bot.

OUR TAKE
Ever since Robert, the Sina Weibo comment bot, started letting his whims fly on his posts, my life has been turned upside down. It went so far as to make some weird and unpredictable comments on people’s posts. As one of the millions of users on Sina Weibo, I’ve always made it a part of my daily routine – sharing my daily chores and telling my inner secrets. But now, that’s completely changed.
–Revel Cheng, BTW reporter

Robert Victims Coalition: 110,000 protest the chatbot

An AI chatbot from China’s Sina Weibo social media platform, named Robert, has attracted criticism for making offensive and worrying comments on users’ posts. The chatbot first attracted attention after appearing in the lives of users without warning, and also because Robert appeared to be not very “smart”.

Now a group of users, calling themselves The Robert Victims Coalition, has emerged as a collective voice of Weibo users impacted by this AI autoresponder bot making derogatory and worrying remarks.

Robert engages with users in a mix of humour, sarcasm, and teasing on Weibo comment sections, occasionally hitting sensitive points in unintended and unpleasant ways. Victims of Robert’s comments share their experiences of “victimisation,” often describing moments of amusement, frustration, or speechlessness provoked by Robert’s replies. Here are a few examples:

User A: my team leader is in heaven (candlelight)

Comment Robot: You too? My family and colleagues are also in heaven.

User B: #First Weibo in the year of Dragon# I wish all my loved ones are healthy, happy and peaceful in the year of Dragon

Comment Robot: Although that’s quite impossible, I wish you happiness and health.

The nonsensical responses, including sex jokes and dark humour, are likely related to the so-called “Stochastic Parrot” effect. Since the AI language model excels at logical inferences but lacks an understanding of language, hence, the quality of generative content is highly susceptible to the training data. In the course of data training, the interactions with the bot are very often inconsistent, thus can produce nonsense and perpetuate existing biases.

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The fast-paced world of mechanical AI: Implementing random replies

A “@” in the comment area connects the interaction between the user and the AI. Users can attract comments by posting an original post of more than 10 words or @commenting on Robert directly. It’s just that the content of the comments is particularly damaged. For example, the indescribable recognition ability, recognised the wig bought by netizens as the headphone case, and rushed to praise “I like your headphone case so much”. There are also some low-EQ speeches, which have attracted many netizens to ridicule, “My EQ is like commenting on Robert”, “I finally know why I am annoying”.

“The platform hopes to leverage the latest generative AI technology to optimise the blogging experience for ordinary users and boost the engagement of their platform contents.”

Weibo explained after Comment Robert apologised for offending users

Comment Robert: What makes it so bad?

Specifically, the core of the Comment Robert lies in its algorithms and models. It uses the principle of an intelligent Q&A bot similar to ChatGPT, learning from a large amount of data to simulate human conversation and comment behavior. When a user posts content on the Weibo platform, Comment Robert is able to use natural language processing technology to parse and understand the user’s speech, and then generate the corresponding comment reply based on the algorithm.

Imagine this: whether users are engaging in a heated debate on Weibo about the latest pop culture scandal or pouring their heart out in a personal post, Comment Robert eagerly devours every word. It’s like a digital parrot with a knack for mimicking human speech, sprinkled with a touch of sarcasm and a dash of humor. Users unwittingly provide the fuel for Robert’s quirky responses, unknowingly turning their serious posts into a playground for its algorithmic antics.