Twitter has suspended the popular AI-powered Twitter account “Explain This Bob” after Tesla CEO Elon Musk accused it of being a “scam crypto account.” The bot was created by Prabhu Biswal from India and used OpenAI’s GPT-4 model to comprehend and provide responses to tweets by those who tagged the account. It was also linked to the ERC-20 memecoin Bob Token (BOB) that was launched in April 2023. The suspension sent the price of BOB down over 30% according to CoinGecko.
Observers believe that Musk views Explain This Bob as a marketing tactic to prop up BOB’s price, leading him to accuse the account of being a scam. However, most observers take the view that BOB isn’t a scam coin and that the suspension is unwarranted as the launch of the token was fair, and BOB is fully decentralized with a 0% tax mechanism.
The suspension is a U-turn on Musk’s earlier impression of the bot, tweeting “I love Bob” in response to one of its tweets on April 20. Twitter has not taken action against the account for Bob Token, however.
Following the suspension, the hashtag “FREEBOB” has been circulating on Crypto Twitter, with many claiming that the suspension is unjustified. The project’s team humorously responded to the news of the suspension, sharing a meme of Musk monitoring a distraught “Bob” in a prison.
Cointelegraph contacted Biswal and Twitter for comment but did not receive an immediate response.