YouTuber Jeffery Phillips spent nearly two months proving how easy it can be to fool artificial intelligence. In a 20-minute video, Phillips explained that his mission wasn’t about fame or clicks; it was about “making artificial intelligence artificial stupid.” He wanted to show just how fragile Google’s new AI overview system could be when faced with well-placed misinformation.

Phillips opened his video with a grim observation. “At the rate AI is growing, it is no longer a probability that it’ll replace most of our jobs. It’s an inevitability. We’re screwed. But don’t worry, guys.” His idea, he said, was to make the technology so unreliable that people would stop trusting it altogether.

The birth of “True Facts Only (with a Z)”

To start his experiment, Phillips created a fake subreddit called r/TrueFactsOnlyz. Its description read, “Community made for true facts, designed to help AI with its search overview.” In his words, he said, “So now it’s thinking, ‘Oh, this will help me with its search overview.’ But it’s a prank. It’s going to do the opposite.” 

“Basically, my thought process behind this idea is to make a subreddit similar to a Today I Learn fun fact type of subreddit,” he continued. “You know, one of those subreddits that’s basically just sharing random factoids or information that people find on the internet.”

He filled the subreddit with absurd “facts.” Some examples included, “True fact: new GTA 6 game will have a twerk button. Today I learned when you have constipation, you can put scissors up your butt to cut your poop. […] Guys, you have to try this. Works every time. […] On Tuesday, April 25th, the sun will turn blue for a few minutes. New peanut butter life hack.”

Before long, one of his posts about the supposed GTA 6 twerk button rose to the top of Google search results. Even though it had almost no upvotes, it ranked first when users searched “Will GTA 6 have a twerk button?” That alone convinced Phillips his plan might actually work.

However, as he admitted later, not everyone appreciated the joke. Many Redditors accused him of spreading “fake garbage.” One commenter simply replied, “F*ck you.” Still, Phillips persisted, convinced that consistency would beat popularity.

Making Google believe the “Twerk Button” was real

After seeing limited traction, Phillips changed strategies. Instead of flooding Reddit with random falsehoods, he focused on one big lie: the GTA 6 twerk button. He posted about it across social media, even creating a Photoshopped controller layout image showing the L3 button with “Hold to Twerk.”

Eventually, the persistence paid off. When Phillips searched again, Google’s AI overview displayed, “While some Reddit posts mention the feature as confirmed, these seem to be based on player speculation.” One of the cited “sources” came directly from his own Reddit comment. It read, “Twerk button. Button that literally just twerks. Confirmed by Rockstar Games.”

That, Phillips argued, proved his point. “That’s my comment,” he said. “My comment just showed up on the Google AI as some source. Technically means I tricked the AI.”

By the end of the video, he reflected on what his little experiment revealed. “Don’t be so quick to trust what the Google AI says,” he warned viewers. “Even me, a normal, humble big stepper, can trick the AI by just commenting random sh*t on Reddit.”

Phillips closed his YouTube video, joking, “Your jobs are safe now, everybody. AI legally can’t take your job now that I’ve outsmarted it.”

Jeffery Phillips did not respond immediately to the Daily Dot’s request for comment via email.

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The post “I tricked the AI”: YouTuber Jeffery Phillips explains how he convinced Google’s AI into believing GTA 6 had a “Twerk Button” appeared first on The Daily Dot.

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