Recently, Crypto Twitter has been abuzz with false rumors surrounding the resignation of Gary Gensler, the Chair of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Interestingly, artificial intelligence seems to have played a role in fueling these rumors.
On July 1st, an article surfaced on a website called “CryptoAlert,” claiming that Gensler had tendered his resignation following an internal investigation, citing an anonymous official as the source. However, upon investigation, Cointelegraph discovered that the article’s text received a 96.8% score from third-party AI-detector ZeroGPT, indicating a high likelihood that the majority of the content was generated by AI.
Breaking: As expected @SECGov PR says @GaryGensler is not resigning
— Charles Gasparino (@CGasparino) July 2, 2023
Notably, the CryptoAlert website appears to be relatively new, with only 17 posts in total, the earliest of which is dated June 22nd. Most of the articles on the site seem to heavily rely on artificial intelligence, as all articles scored around 70% with ZeroGPT. Furthermore, registration records reveal that the domain “thecryptoalert.com” was registered on June 24th at 4:47 pm UTC.
Despite the dubious origins of the article, several accounts on Twitter reposted the story. The most widely viewed post, shared by Whalechart, had amassed 1.4 million views at the time of publication. However, on July 3rd, Charles Gasparino, a reporter from Fox Business Network, confirmed in a tweet that Gary Gensler is not resigning, having received clarification from the SEC.
BREAKING:
Anonymous official at the SEC has reportedly disclosed that chairman Gary Gensler is going to resign following an internal investigation.
— whalechart (@WhaleChart) July 2, 2023
This is not the first time rumors of Gensler’s resignation have circulated. Earlier, on April 20th, unsubstantiated claims of Gensler’s impending “firing” spread through questionable sources. Additionally, on June 12th, U.S. lawmakers introduced a bill known as the “SEC Stabilization Act” to the House of Representatives, which included a provision aiming to dismiss Gensler, labeling him a “tyrannical Chairman.”
It is crucial to exercise caution and critical thinking when encountering news stories, especially in the realm of cryptocurrencies, as the prevalence of AI-generated content highlights the potential for disinformation and misinformation to spread rapidly.
