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Twitter suspends memecoin-linked AI bot after Elon Musk’s ‘scam crypto’ claim

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Twitter suspends memecoin-linked AI bot after Elon Musk's ‘scam crypto’ claim

Twitter has suspended the account of the popular memecoin-linked artificial intelligence-powered bot “Explain This Bob” after Elon Musk alleged it was a “scam crypto account.”

Musk alleged the account was a scam in a tweet on June 18 in areply to the bot, the account was seemingly suspended soon after.

The Explain This Bob account reportedly amassed over 400,000 followers before its suspension. 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.

The project 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.

The suspension is a U-turn on Musk’s earlier impression of the bot, who tweeted “I love Bob” in response to one of its tweets on April 20, a tweet which also prominently features on the project’s website.

Twitter has not taken action against the account for Bob Token, however. The project’s team humorously responded to the news of the suspension, sharing a meme of Musk monitoring a distraught “Bob” in a prison.

Observers believe Musk is of the view that Explain This Bob is being used as a marketing tactic to prop up BOB’s price.

Related: A PR expert’s tips for memecoin projects

Since the suspension, the hashtag “FREEBOB” has circulated on Crypto Twitter. Most observers take the view that BOB isn’t a scam coin and the suspension is unwarranted as the launch of the token was “fair” in addition to BOB being “fully decentralized” with a 0% tax mechanism.

Another claimed the team didn’t provide themselves with any tokens or airdrops prior to the Bob Token launch in April.

Cointelegraph contacted Biswal and Twitter for comment but did not receive an immediate response.

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