Mugging in Progress Sometimes the reply bots imitate AI bots, creating the dumbest tchotchkes imaginable. No website is better suited to facilitate this unholy fusion than X, formerly Twitter, where countless fake accounts sell drop-shippable merch like T-shirts and mugs with artwork scraped from the web. These bots aren’t a new problem. But now, thanks to the proliferation of AI-generated images, the machines can get caught in a feedback loop in which they end up selling crude copies of an AI’s botched imitation of human art. One example of this to go viral recently is this image, which features a clearly AI-generated Princess Leia from “Star Wars” holding a very peculiar mug. It reads (and no, this is not a typo): “Help Me Coffee You’ry’re My Only Hope!” A bot in the replies links to a purchasable version of the mug on “GoodSirtss.com” (again, that’s really it’s name) that faithfully reproduces the “You’ry’re” — the kind of high quality commodity you can only get from the tech industry’s favorite plaything. Maybe there’s some ironic novelty to be found in owning that. “The world is a dead thing, with nothing inside it,” lamented one observer. THE WORLD IS A DEAD THING, WITH NOTHING INSIDE IT. pic.twitter.com/5jcj4hDzeX — BEATSKELTON.BSKY.SOCIAL (@BEAT_SKELTON) January 24, 2024 Generative Grift This was an accident, but deliberately selling AI-generated mugs is somewhat of a notable side hustle (or at least according to the people whose side hustle is telling other people about side hustles). There’s certainly no shortage of…Reply Bots Selling Mugs With Garbled AI Nonsense on Them