Numerous examples of AI-generated “slop” content falsely claiming Elon Musk has invented a variety of new sci-fi technologies are flooding across Facebook after the billionaire helped elect Donald Trump to the White House.
The posts claim Musk has invented everything from a “water engine” to a $6,999 tiny house on wheels to Iron Man-style armor to a pilotable flying saucer, with many tracing back to pages in the Philippines and Vietnam, according to an analysis from tech journalism site 404 Media.
Numerous Facebook users appear to be interacting with the posts and believing their claims, which in some cases enable the “slop” creators to earn bonuses as part of the platform’s creator program.
“It appears there was a spike in public interest for Elon Musk around the time of the U.S. presidential election, coinciding with the timing of some of these posts,” McKenzie Sadeghi, who studies AI at NewsGuard, told the site. “I’m not aware of the full extent/time frame of this campaign but it is possible that these accounts were attempting to capitalize on this surge in public interest by pumping out clickbait-like, AI-generated content of Musk, and in some cases, directing users to find an article about Musk in the pinned comment in an effort to bypass Facebook’s algorithmic limitations on external links.”
While the claims in these posts are untrue, they come as the real, non-AI Musk has leaned into the language and aesthetics of the internet and social media as part of his alliance with Donald Trump.
Musk has been tapped to head a new Department of Government Efficiency recommending billions in federal spending cuts. The agency, DOGE for short, takes its name from the “doge” meme, which has mutated from a popularly shared image of a Shiba Inu dog, to the Dogecoin cryptocurrency, to a major influence over the Trump administration.
Musk has promised the DOGE will use the web to crowdsource ideas on spending cuts and post an online leaderboard with the “most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars.”
The billionaire has also been an outspoken advocate for online election betting using cryptocurrency, which emerged as a popular, social media-inflected alternative means of forecasting the 2024 election.
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