Is 'Explain This Bot' A 'Scam Crypto Account'? Elon Musk Thinks So

“Explain This Bob”, a popular Twitter bot account, has been suspended after Elon Musk accused it of a crypto scam. Before it was suspended late Saturday night, the account had more than 402,000 followers. ExplainThisBob is an AI-based bot which was used to explain other people's tweets. It did this by translating complex tweets into simple ones using Open AI's GPT-4 model. A tweet's 'explanation' is provided when a Twitter user tags the account underneath it. Explain This Bob is also linked to the cryptocurrency token called $BOB. 

The suspension happened only a few hours after Musk’s tweet on the matter, reported BNO News. “This sure looks like a scam crypto account, if so it will be suspended.” Musk said in a tweet directed at the account.

This sure looks like a scam crypto account. If so, it will be suspended. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 18, 2023

When Elon Musk Praised Explain This Bob

The account enjoyed a large fanbase. Elon Musk tweeted, “I love Bob” in April this year. It happened when this Twitter bot account jumped into one of Musk’s conversations on this platform and gave an easy explanation about his tweet. 

I love Bob — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 19, 2023

The associated crypto coin BOB and the account's tremendous popularity both quickly soared after this. According to reports, the value of Bob coin surged by 4744 per cent and the number of followers increased by 1000 per cent after Elon Musk's post.

How Things Changed

Things changed Elon Musk abruptly responded to the bot account's post on June 17, calling it a cryptocurrency hoax. The account was suspended after a while. It is believed that due to its connection to the BOB token, Twitter concluded that the bot was a cryptocurrency scam account. The price of the BOB token slipped by over 45 per cent, as per Coin Desk.

Before it was suspended, the account responded to Musk disputing the accusation. In an automated tweet, it said that Bob is not a scam, but a decentralized meme coin with zero tax, and no contract ownership. “Bob is inspired by Doge and for the people," the account added. 

The account was still suspended. Explain This Bob created by Prabhu P Biswal, who hails from Odisha.  He runs various e-commerce websites, mobile and web pages for a living, as per a Business Today report.

Another automated bot named  @AskTheWassie, a comedic frog that functioned similarly to @ExplainThisBob was also suspended by Twitter on Sunday.