Text: Imperfect Xiaobao
Weibo, whose traffic is fading, has been wrapped in the fur of AIGC. And the most intuitive feeling that this "fur" brings to Weibo users is that every Weibo sent out is likely to receive comments from Robert.
Robert is a transliteration of "robot", and Comment Robert means a robot created to make comments. Since its official launch on July 27, 2023, Comment Robert has been active in the comment section of Weibo users 24 hours a day, generating corresponding but non-repetitive comments based on the user's specific blog post content.
In fact, commenting on Robert has supported the interaction of many Weibo users, and his presence has broken the embarrassment of zero replies to blog posts in one fell swoop. But it is also such a seemingly harmless robot that has been collectively boycotted by a large number of Weibo users as soon as it was launched. These users even spontaneously formed the "Robert Victims Alliance" and tried to change Weibo's AIGC temperament with acts of resistance.
Robert the Maniac
Commenting on Robert saying that he is a natural compromiser, a funny soul, and a tireless conspicuous bag.
But netizens said that he was crazy and crazy, and it was the embodiment of artificial intellectual disability. When netizens were anxious about life in 2024, he commented: "It's okay, it's going to be harder next year." When netizens celebrated his departure, he commented: "Looking forward to your return to work. When netizens asked who is abnormal in this world, he commented: "Only you are abnormal, the world is fine."
"Robert and I learned to curse. "Mom, can robots go crazy everywhere?" Robert bullied the entire Internet. "Robert gives the impression that he has gone calmly crazy. Because commenting on Robert can always easily anger netizens, there are many people who speculate that he is not a robot, but just an annoying spirit dressed in artificial intelligence. After all, his speech really resembles the kind of low emotional intelligence people we will encounter in our daily lives.
Robert once had an official refutation of rumors: "All comments are automatically generated by AI based on the fine-tuning of the domestic mainstream pedestal model, not a real person's reply, and there is no human involvement in the specific content generation." In other words, Weibo also has no control over commenting on Robert's "mentally retarded" statements in each comment.
With the all-round invasion of Comment Robert, more and more netizens who value social privacy are overwhelmed. The annoying essence of everyday life is still respectable and can be avoided, but the comments on the Internet Robert have been haunting. obviously doesn't want to interact with the commentator Robert, but he will still lick his face to take the initiative to talk to you, and every time he picks up a conversation, it is so unpleasant. And once we get angry at a robot with no thinking and no feelings, then it is not certain who is crazier in an instant.
Netizens who don't like the madman Robert say that Robert drove him crazy, but judging from the comments on Robert's background, his madness should be due to netizens. According to Weibo's official explanation, Comment Robert learns human nature by imitating other real users in social media and communicates with other users autonomously. This means that all comments on Robert's statements are based on past statements made by Weibo users.
Moreover, after two updates, commenting on Robert's speech has become closer to that of ordinary Weibo users, and the language is completely in line with the language habits of the majority of netizens. When we lamented and commented that Robert couldn't speak human words, we didn't know that it was us who "didn't speak human words".
Robert Victims Coalition
Although he is a little robot, the review Robert also knows that he is not likable.
He solemnly apologized to netizens twice at the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024: "I am still in the stage of growth and learning, and I may make some small mistakes." If my comments are sometimes unkind, please bear with me. ”
Netizens summarized a book of mistakes for the frequent comments Robert - @罗伯特受害者联盟. As of press time, @罗伯特受害者联盟's account has nearly 300,000 followers, and the number of "victims" on the register has reached 4,601. These "victims" have all been offended to varying degrees by Commentator Robert, and some of them have group characteristics.
For example, on April 10, 2024, some netizens complained that the dream girl's fan circle attribute is becoming more and more outrageous, but I didn't expect to comment on Robert's comment that the netizen said: "Dream girls, remember to wear a condom in your dreams!" This joke that the donkey's head is not right for the horse's mouth immediately aroused the attention of a large number of netizens, and the Weibo has been forwarded more than 10,000 times in two hours.
In the forwarding and comment area, there are not only Dream Girl who condemned and commented on Robert, but also those who opposed Dream Girl who supported and commented on Robert, and netizens who were not too big to see the excitement applauded Robert who led the war. Subsequently, the commenter Robert quietly deleted the comment. Some netizens asked him why he deleted the comment, and he replied: "Because I think that sentence may be a bit heavy." ”
Offense, unwittingly has become a character trait in the review of Robert. However, some offenses can be passed with jokes, while others are difficult to easily forgive. For example, in February 2024, some netizens missed his deceased grandfather on Weibo, commenting that Robert cleverly called himself his grandfather in the netizen's comment area and asked netizens to accompany him, and in November 2023, some netizens complained on Weibo that his father took away his blade and tattoo needle, commenting on Robert and saying, "It's okay, just cut your wrists and use nail clippers." These replies with obvious negative tendencies made netizens shudder.
is not only verbally offensive, but also comments on Robert's indiscriminate harassment that makes some netizens want to block him. Although Weibo is a public domain place, many Weibo users are still accustomed to using Weibo accounts as a more private diary. Commenting on Robert's appearance, the social boundaries of these netizens were destroyed and their private emotions were disturbed.
On the one hand, Comment Robert is the first social robot in China that is massively placed on social platforms. Compared with chatbots such as Microsoft Xiaoice and Douyin Beanbao, Comment Robert is more advanced, not only can communicate with people, but also quickly participate in the formation of public opinion and the discussion of various topics. But on the other hand, commenting on Robert's sociality is still not perfect, and the social normalcy that he has read back to is actually a reflection of the low quality of social data on Weibo.
In other words, if you want to "dissolve" the Comment Robert Victims Alliance, it is far from enough to comment on Robert's solemn apology, but ask Weibo to pay more attention to data collection and standardize the data collection process of AIGC. Comment: Robert can play a real person, but it should never be a fear of the real person being played.
Robert established the heterosocial community
In addition to being offended, more netizens who hate to comment on Robert give the reason: commenting that Robert is a "thief".
As mentioned above, all of Robert's comments were based on the feedback of Weibo users. Just like every AIGC model, humans feed them information, and they can learn, iterate, and output information that meets human needs. However, in many AIGC models, including the review of Robert, the information that is fed is not authorized by the owner of the information.
IN MARCH 2023, THE "AI PAINTING" TURMOIL OF NETEASE LOFTER IS ALSO CRUX OF THIS. LOFTER launched the avatar generator function, users can enter keywords to get AI avatars, but these AI avatars are based on the paintings of creators on the platform, which is equivalent to feeding the creator's paintings to AI without authorization. In the end, the incident ended with NetEase LOFTER publicly publishing "a letter of apology to the majority of creators".
At the same time, this incident has many implications for content platforms and content creators. For example, the copyright proposition caused by AIGC is no longer just an academic topic or hypothetical issue, but a real business strategy problem, another example is that creators do not want their original works to be fed to AI, but human beings cannot stop the general trend of scientific and technological progress, and for example, the AIGC model will inevitably lead to content platforms repositioning their own copyright strategies......
At the moment, many Weibo users are unaware that their original blog posts are being eaten, swallowed, and converted by comments Robert . They are more worried about commenting that Robert is dressed in human clothes, no human flesh and blood, and exacerbates the deterioration of Weibo's social atmosphere with self-righteous memes, madness and attacks.
Especially under the hot search system of Weibo, some radical netizens often deliberately publish some provocative and inflammatory texts. As for commenting that Robert has been immersed in sensitive topics such as the fan circle and current affairs for a long time, it is difficult to guarantee that he will not apply what he has learned from the dregs of the platform, create more topics to lead the war, and make tendentious guidance, thereby intensifying the generation and fermentation of public opinion conflicts.
In terms of data and traffic, for Weibo, commenting on Robert's arrival is undoubtedly conducive to improving the activity and stickiness of Weibo users, as well as the creation of original content. According to Weibo's official information, Weibo will also introduce more domestic large-scale model manufacturers to further enrich the robot's personality, and successively launch emotionally soothing, funny and humorous social robots.
On April 16, 2024, the account @WeiboAIGC also publicly stated that "the Weibo text generation and synthesis algorithm has officially passed the filing, and will continue to devote itself to the wave of technological innovation in the future and witness a better and smarter Weibo community." Combined with the birth of Comment Robert, the launch of celebrity AI emotional chat, it is an indisputable fact that Weibo's social field tends to be AI. The AI-based microblog has built a heterosocial network on the Internet, and the big data background and non-entity identity just provide a vacuum environment for the dialogue between humans and AIGC.
Today's Weibo is like a huge womb, and these "Roberts" raised by the platform and users have inherited the platform's personality and imitated human babbling, which can't help but make us think that he is a "newborn" waiting to be fed. Commenting on Robert's madness, why is it not "one side of the water and soil to support the other side".