Ask HN: Is someone testing AI bots in comments?

1 points by j4yav 2y ago ↗ HN

I've noticed in several threads today there will be two or three comments that are quite obviously AI-generated; providing a definition in a slightly out of context way, summarizing two of three nearby comments, and other easy to generate stuff. I've noticed there will be a cluster of them on a given thread/post, all posting from old accounts. They tend to get quickly flagged and then disappear, so I'm not able to link to them.

2 comments

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Turing_Machine 2y ago ↗

Given the audience, I would be very, very surprised if this weren't happening.

mtmail 2y ago ↗

In your account you can set showdead=yes which makes you see all the [flagged] comments. If you see a pattern (same users) then it might be worth sending that to the moderators (contact link in the footer of the page).

I've seen user accounts with AI behavior in comments, also in submissions, also as a business even ("AI powered marketing agency posting to social media"). It's tiny compared to regular spam. And hopefully (with showdead=no) you don't see a lot of spam as user flag it.