It seems like hardly a week passes before we hear of another executive caught red-handed, but this one is particularly attention grabbing: Bill Pulte, the inventor of #TwitterPhilanthropy, which sees Pulte giving away thousands of dollars seemingly at random to people in need, is accusing the incoming COO of PulteGroup Inc. of stalking, harassing, and defamation.
In other words, there’s a lot to unpack here. But this article is less about giving you a blow-by-blow of what happened, and more focusing on how it happened. Because the how behind this drama - the use of a malicious army of Twitter bots - should worry all of us.
Bill Pulte, a much-beloved philanthropist with a devoted following on Twitter, alleges that incoming COO, Brandon Jones, used a bot army to harass members of the Pulte family, steal identities, and interfere with their online lives wherever possible because of an 8-year-old grudge against Pulte’s late grandfather. To do this, Jones is said to have used a complex system of fake Twitter accounts set up using AI-generated pseudonymous identities with AI-generated names, AI-generated pictures of fake people, and bot-driven account information and activity.
In other words, one man can completely derail a family’s life - and their charity work - by letting an AI do the dirty work for him.
Recent advances in AI technology have made it possible for everyday people to have fun with simple AI-generated activities, like creating AI-generated artwork, letting an AI write your marketing copy for you, or having an AI create a completely artificial person (this one is particularly creepy). While some argue that AI-generated content steals from talented creators and threatens the livelihood of artists, we can all probably agree that this is all, at the very least, fascinating.
Which makes this story of backstabbings and harassment all the more fascinating; this could be the very first case of this level of sabotage through the use of artificial intelligence. AI-generated betrayal, if you will.
Circling back to the main story, Pulte alleges that Brandon Jones, the Fortune 500 company’s incoming COO, took out a long-standing grudge against Pulte’s grandfather on the Pulte family, which could have interfered with the ongoing charity work that Pulte is engaged in. Pulte has recently raised over $2.5 million for the families affected by the Uvalde school shooting using this organization, which makes his claims of Jones’ interference that much darker.
In recent days, new Twitter CEO Elon Musk has claimed that he is committed to cracking down on some of the bot networks active on Twitter. As the alleged actions of Jones illustrates, these bot crackdowns can’t come soon enough. The longer people are able to use
AI-generated content to carry out petty grudges, the longer innocent people get caught in the crossfire. In this case, that might look like people in need of philanthropic help from #TwitterPhilanthropy being left behind as an army of malicious bots makes charity work impossible.
It’s too soon to tell how the story will play out between Pulte and Jones. The Pulte family has filed a lawsuit against Jones, and now it’s up to the court system to work out settlements and how everything will shake out. But one thing we know for certain is that this should be a warning shot to every other person online: watch your backs, lest a disgruntled COO unleashes a bot army on you.