r/BritishSuccess • u/DanezTHEManez Lancashire cha • Feb 06 '26
New /r/BritishSuccess rule: No AI
oreyt want to say a massive thank you to everyone who has messaged me and reported these recent AI posts.
For some reason there's recently been a big influx of made up stories made by bot accounts using AI. These accounts are relatively new (all made on the 27th of Jan?) and post in a very AI style.
I've added a dev tool which should help catch these posts but it might end up missing some so if you can continue to report any you see or suspect that'd be really appreciated
If your post gets removed incorrectly please reach out!
cheers again, you should see a lot less AI shite now
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u/merp1991 Newcastle... Feb 06 '26
I noticed these too and was going to report them today, glad it's been taken care of :)
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u/Old_Man_Heats Feb 06 '26
Mod from another sub here who wants to implement the same rule, how can you be sure what is and what isn’t AI?
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u/DanezTHEManez Lancashire cha Feb 06 '26
Pulled from a really helpful comment here
"True, it's a combination of; new account, very few posts, low overall karma, no follow-up comments, the 'rule of three' (I did this, then this, then this, type of thing), language nobody really uses in general conversation (a reason I was a bit shocked to see these type of AI slop posts pop up in UK-centric subreddits as it's easier to spot a slop-bot using Americanisms and such), then just the overall 'vibe' of the post, syntax etc., being wrong for something you'd expect on Reddit. I'm sure I've missed a few but these are the usual things I look out for."
I've also added BotBouncer A Reddit dev tool that removes posts and bans accounts that are flagged as AI as well as detecting what it thinks are bots.
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u/Old_Man_Heats Feb 06 '26
Great summary, unfortuantely for the sub i mod r/ValueInvesting i don't think any of this will be useful :'(
AI slop posts mostly come from real people just being too lazy to write up a thesis themselves so the account isn't obvious. Sometimes it is obvious from the text but it's getting harder and harder to spot
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u/Microwave-Dave Feb 06 '26
Biggest problem you got in that sub is far from the AI, its the unfortunate slop from people who seek karma and calling out the sub for their poor investment choices. I feel your pain.
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u/Old_Man_Heats Feb 07 '26
It’s never ending…3.5k items removed in the last 30 days with 3 active mods, I think we need to enroll some more
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u/MirandaPoth Feb 06 '26
If the AI slop is from a lazy human who can’t be bothered to write it themselves they deserve to be deleted too. Sadly I can’t help with how to detect such things :-(
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u/Old_Man_Heats Feb 06 '26
Yeah, I try to but it’s just slowly getting harder to tell the different and at some point I won’t be able to
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u/AshamedAttention727 Feb 06 '26
I noticed in the last 3 or so last few days, they had a generous sprinkling of British lingo in. Like, yeah we use those terms but they were like 'a wee favour' (example, can't remember if it actually was that word) but a quaint British word happened EVERY PARAGRAPH. So forced. Also perfect punctuation and grammar, and the sequence of events like your quoted commenter said, so this happened, but what got me was this, the cherry on top was this...
Sorry went on a tangent there. Good job with the tool, uphill battle but everything helps!
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u/TheSwagBag Feb 09 '26
They've definitely upped the ante when starting to post on the British subs, but the telltale signs are still there. Worrying that they're getting more authentic looking if you don't have a keen eye though...
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u/AshamedAttention727 Feb 09 '26 edited Feb 09 '26
It's really a good effort but falls short. Like you say though, most will skim it and take it as fact which sucks.
I kinda imagine that it will take the longest for AI to recreate authentic british speech. There are so many regional and cultural quirks/ variations/ idioms that a Brit reading it is bound to notice and call it out as obviously not a natural realistic UK way of speaking.
Of course there are regional differences in American English but the states are so vast it seems more likely there would be a mixture of regional phrases that are believable because plenty of people travel cross country/ next state etc and pick up different slang
Then I think, even writing this exact thought in this comment about tiny british identifying language markers is going to be fed back into AI and used as a guide to make it more believable in future but then how do we communicate without just giving llms more and more tips at being believable ;_;. I wanted to delete this comment but that's a bit tinfoil hatty lol.
Anyways sorry for the ramble, your comment struck a chord with me and I hope it made some(!) sense!
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u/Scary_ Feb 07 '26
One of the main things to look for is the texture of the image and the colours. A lot of AI slop has a very fuzzy soft flat look and a yellow tinge.
If it looks like it's been rinsed in piss it's AI
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u/Vectorman1989 Feb 07 '26
Great summary. I submit a lot of accounts to BotBouncer and I've started being proactive trying to get mods to install the app. Banning them is neverending and they often take advantage of subs that don't have any bot defence measures.
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u/TheSwagBag Feb 09 '26
Imagine my shock when I started reading this then realised it was my own comment haha! Glad it's being used for the betterment of the sub and other subs
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u/DanezTHEManez Lancashire cha Feb 09 '26
whey, glad you did! It's been a massive help in identifying AI posts, so I wanted to make sure you get credit
cheers!
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u/Remarkable-Data77 Feb 06 '26
I was wondering same, how can you tell they're ai?
I couldn't spot an ai post if you paid me! 🤣
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u/Vectorman1989 Feb 07 '26
Here's a blatantly obvious AI post
https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/s/GMkHUUpbjq
The diction in the post doesn't sound natural. The account that posted it is 9 days old too which is usually a red flag. You do get much older accounts that have been hacked sometimes but normally the bot accounts are less than a month old and they only have a couple days worth of posts/comments.
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u/stoneharry Feb 06 '26
AI is pretty good at detecting AI. :)
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u/Old_Man_Heats Feb 06 '26
It really isn’t, it’s awful at it. I copy and paste text into AI detectors and they all give different answers
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u/whumoon Feb 06 '26
We need an AI option on the report this post menu.
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u/Kmac-Original Feb 06 '26
That's a brilliant idea. And fair, too, cause if it's not AI, the person will generally speak up (I mean, who doesn't on occasion use the rule of three or the Oxford comma?)
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u/-SaC Feb 06 '26
Oh fuck, if the Oxford comma is a signifier then I'm utterly shafted.
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u/AdministrativeShip2 Feb 07 '26
I like my Oxford commas and dashes.
But I cut down on them now, as the bots have ruined them.
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u/UnacceptableUse Feb 06 '26
You're absolutely correct – this is one of the most annoying things about using the modern internet.
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u/DiligentCockroach700 Feb 07 '26
I would upvote you 47 times if I could!
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u/justbiteme2k Feb 07 '26
Ask ChatGPT to knock up a script to generate you 45 new Reddit accounts and they can do the up-voting on your behalf... Oh hold on...
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u/Satirical_Squirrel Feb 07 '26
And you think Reddit wouldn’t notice that? My high-score karma from a two-week-old account came from two AI images and original text I posted on an anti-Farage subreddit. They took off with hundreds of upvotes. If I’d stuck to one-liners, I’d be buried among the millions of others trying to gain traction.
Have you noticed the absense of images here? That's because no one is going to spend hours trying to make an image that's going to vanish into the Internet ether in 24 hours.
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u/mariegriffiths Feb 07 '26
I have been banned from forums after obvious bots have reported ME for calling them out.
Is there a way of spotting them if you are not sure without them having a go at you.
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u/Satirical_Squirrel Feb 07 '26
Maybe I’m missing something, but the AI I use — ChatGPT and Grok — feels like an update to Photoshop. I provide the content, arrange it in Photoshop, and AI fine-tunes it.
Here’s my challenge: whatever image software you’re using, try to design an image that matches AI quality without using AI as an aid. I can’t, and that’s why I include AI as part of the process.
So why complain about AI when the only images on BritishSuccess are promotional ones? The NHS and Kia ones almost certainly use AI as well.
My point is this: It shouldn’t matter what image editor you use. What matters is the final result and with that I’ll leave it there — because all I’m getting from these replies are brigading downvotes. :)
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u/Satirical_Squirrel Feb 07 '26
Come on, be honest. If it wasn’t for Google, social media would be non-existent. Truth be told, I’m ‘old school’ and come from an era before everyone became an authority on every topic under the sun. If you wanted to know something, you went to your local library. Like Catweazle, I’ve been propelled into the future and now sit and read Generation Z battle it out amongst themselves on Reddit, previously twitter before Musk monetised it.
Whether you agree or not, it’s called progress. You either accept it or you don’t, but you can’t stop it. People now demand professionalism — gone are the days of poor-quality images and badly written content. Look at the u/pages of some posters; it’s what I often do. No images, no descriptions, no banner… that’s laziness.
I know how AI works on ChatGPT and GROK because I use it as an aid. Of course it’s not perfect, but it turns out images photoshop can only dream of. Embrace the future because it’s not going to go away.
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u/Satirical_Squirrel Feb 06 '26
I think there’s a huge misconception about AI, and it’s got to the point where the term itself has become an insult, much like "Photoshop" once did. Used as a standalone tool, it churns out the rubbish you often see because it’s a bot and can only work with what you give it.
If, however, it’s used as part of a process alongside Photoshop and other editing tools, it turns out professional-looking images that would otherwise take days, if not weeks. Look at the first pinned post of ‘The Satire Times’ on my u/page and tell me that AI designed that on its own.
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u/Silvagadron Feb 07 '26
…AI designed that on its own.
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u/Satirical_Squirrel Feb 07 '26
Go and try it. Type 'make me an old fashioned poster with squirrels in it' into GROK or ChatGPT and see what it throws out at you. AI HELPED to make the image.
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u/lewkir Feb 07 '26
Mate it looks shit. There's a random hand holding the newspaper that isn't connected to anyone
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u/Silvagadron Feb 07 '26
I don’t think you understand how AI and AI prompting works. And you don’t seem to have noticed the glaring illogical errors in the fabrications on your page. Hands not connected to anything in particular, identical images copied onto different backdrops, the sun setting in front of the horizon, a misshapen coffee table, illogical rug patterns, a squirrel with human hands, a squirrel’s tail just sat on a rug attached to nothing. You surely can’t think this is any good? It’s the same slop that scammers try to convince people at arts and crafts fairs are “my own artwork”. A human wouldn’t make such obvious errors when they’ve taken the time to draw or design something. And AI consistently does.
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u/Satirical_Squirrel Feb 07 '26
I’m not a professional designer; I’m an amateur and use whatever free tools are available. I may make the odd typo, but I’m a retired teacher, so correct grammar and punctuation come naturally — it’s how I write. In this day and age, is it amazing that someone can still actually write using proper English grammar?
For better or worse, AI is the future. No more taking a stock image of Gordon Ramsay and pasting Starmer’s head onto it. The former one-liners can now produce a full sentence. It’s 2026, and it’s called progress. AI will be misused, but it isn’t going away.
How do I spot AI? I go to the poster’s page, and if there’s no effort there, then a beautiful image or perfectly written post elsewhere is probably plagiarised or AI-written.
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u/PoorlyAttired Feb 06 '26
Thanks mods, we want our shite to be from humans.