Activist Group Fools Journalists With AI Hoax Criticizing Toyota’s Anti-EV Views

Some members of the automotive press had been bamboozled by a Toyota press launch and accompanying convention final week. The story was that, with a purpose to promote the corporate’s electrified choices, Toyota had launched an AI companion named Electra — an AI that instantly went off the rails and commenced speaking about Toyota’s hesitancy to embrace electrical autos.

The press launch, in fact, was pretend. The convention featured actual media members watching as actors performed out a script. The AI assistant was a ruse, however the message it delivered was very actual: Irrespective of how a lot Toyota makes use of the time period “electrified,” its hybrids nonetheless burn fuel. However who, if not Toyota, was delivering that message?

That reply got here this previous weekend, when actors and activists The Sure Males posted a full video of the Toyota convention to their YouTube channel. The group later added the venture as a case examine on its web site, confirming that it was their very own creation.

Different teams have criticized Toyota’s “electrified” branding as deceptive, from EV house owners teams to the Federal Commerce Fee. But, after I reached out to The Sure Males, the group claimed that no different events had been concerned on this effort:

I developed the thought for this venture after buddies advised me concerning the “electrified diversified” marketing campaign Toyota was operating. It felt like such a sick “newspeaky” advert technique, to actually redefine phrases, it was simply ripe for a brandalism takedown.

I requested concerning the social shares as properly — posts that sprang up on Twitter and Reddit from consumer PersianCowboy — and was advised that they had been utterly natural unfold. The consumer behind the account, Hooman Hedayati, was known as “a buddy of a buddy who works in labor organizing … Hooman posted a vid of it, not coordinated by us.”

It appears The Sure Males pulled off their stunt efficiently, convincing people each out and in of the media that this AI was really constructed by Toyota. Maybe a few of that believability comes from the stunt’s messaging — on some stage, everyone knows there’s an actual hole between “electrified” and “electrical.”