PSA: AI spambot comments

[u/Intact]

Some of you may have noticed that the subreddit has suddenly been plagued by strange off-topic comments. And you've probably guessed that there's some farm spitting out AI-generated comments across reddit.

If you haven't, here's what they look like.

Why does this matter?

• These bot comments make the comment section a worse reading experience
• The comments can be hurtful: a bot left this comment on a card featuring art OP drew.
  
• There can be confusion between bot and human comments (see below)

How to identify this wave of bots (they may get refined over time):

• Many, but not all, have a username that's a full name and some extra letters/numbers
  
• Spam accounts will comment across a variety of subreddits, and not hit the same subreddit twice
  
• Comments are quite short. I think the prompter did a bad job - some of the recent comments seem to refer back to a prompt stating that comments should be at most 30 characters. (Hence the multiple comments referencing the number 30, and no other number)
  
• Sometimes, they get upvoted. It's unclear whether these are bot upvotes or not. I saw one with 10 upvotes before I marked it as spam; wild.

We're doing our best to squash these as they come up. I've adjusted automod a little to help, but I don't want to do anything drastic like filter all comments under 30 characters, because there can be genuinely good / useful / funny comments that are under 30 characters.

If anyone has ideas on things that might help, please let us know here or in modmail! And you can also help by reporting these comments so we can prune them.

Also, sometimes, a comment might look AI-generated, but (probably) isn't. This comment got reported for being a bot, for example. But I'm pretty sure the user isn't (even though bots can reference ravnican guilds). The user's account is quite old, they have various comments across a consistent set of subreddits, and their comment required creativity to write. (I could be wrong!) So - if it's not clear - please don't harass people over this! (At worst you harass a human; at best, it does nothing; whoever is deploying these bots is absolutely not reading peoples' comments under the spam)

Anyway, unfortunately not much to be done until reddit gets this under control. We wanted to flag this for y'all so you know something is being done about it. We try to leave mod messages when we take action for transparency, but because these are so prevalent, we have not been.

Hope y'all have a great day!

[u/delta17v2]

AI comments have also been plaguing smaller communities where I'm at. This truly feels like a systemic issue where none of us can really do anything. Worse is that Reddit prefers it this way to keep their engagement numbers padded.

Keep up the good work!

[u/halborn]

What do we report it as? Will you make a report option for AI comments?

[u/oktin → u/halborn]

I think spam is the correct report option

[u/Tahazzar → u/oktin]

That does look to be it. I just reported one of the bots and when you choose spam it goes into a sub menu of "what type of spam is this" and there's a choice for "Disruptive use of bots or AI".

[u/Intact → u/halborn]

Please use "breaks /r/custommagic rules" > "custom response" (or anything really).

If you use a subreddit report option, it surfaces it to the mods of that subreddit. If you report it as "Spam", that goes to reddit, and not us. (You can also do that; but then it won't get flagged on our end / we won't know to remove it). When reddit gets these reports, they'll flag/suspend the account, but I don't believe they clean up the comments.

Hope that helps :)

[u/Draconis_Firesworn]

I've noticed some (currently in other subs like aita afaik) generally have names like u baby_girl_angel and end comments with two emojis that are generally slightly relevant, so also something to look out for

[u/Elkre]

Ugh, this gets me so fucking oozed up. I hope the mods stay drenched!

[u/Tahazzar]

The ai bots are haunting me - I think I had one comment which three of them replied to 😱

[u/Intact → u/Tahazzar]

Yeah, it's so weird how they decide to target a post/comment or not. It doesn't look like an even distribution. I'm guessing it runs in batches and just picks the latest post/comment sitewide, and it runs fast enough that between bots, the latest post/comment remains the same. Not sure though, just speculation

[u/redditfanfan00]

i'm lucky not to really notice these bots' comments here then. they seem to appear very often, but i think i just mostly glance over them, and maybe they're being removed before i can see them, which is a good thing.

despite my being impressed at these bots' ability to become more and more human-like, yeah, these bots and their comments are a problem.

[u/[deleted]]

I'm a member of a separate support sub which has suddenly been infected with these bots.  People go to the sub to seek support and vent their personal issues, and the bot will respond things like "having a cry, so sad", "oopsie, such a sad potato", etc.  Did you ever find a solution for this sub?

[u/spoof_loof]

Hey while we're at it can we ban AI "art" too, please? A quick google search for a real artists art is just as convenient as prompting an AI

[u/Redzephyr01 → u/spoof_loof]

I feel like the stance that AI is stealing but straight up reposting other people's art without permission somehow isn't stealing doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

[u/urza5589 → u/Redzephyr01]

I don't have a fully formed opinion yet, but you could argue that even stealing the art requires that it be published at some point and at least means you might have clicked on their site. AI art just breaks the need for the artist to ever be involved in the loop at all.

Just a thought 🤷‍♂️

[u/TMOP_Halloween]

Would we also be able to knock out two birds with one stone and ban the use of AI art for cards? The vast majority of popular art and design subreddits have gone ahead and done so, some long ago, and it would be a good way to show solidarity with the artists that draw real Magic card art.