Original: Simon Willison · 23/02/2026
Summary
The article discusses the rise of AI bots on Twitter that provide generic replies to tweets, termed ‘reply guy tools’, and their impact on user engagement.Key Insights
“The latest scourge of Twitter is AI bots that reply to your tweets with generic, banal commentary slop.” — Introduction to the issue of AI bots on Twitter.
“I just found out that the category name for this genre of software is reply guy tools.” — Discovery of the term used for these AI bots.
Topics
Full Article
23rd February 2026 The latest scourge of Twitter is AI bots that reply to your tweets with generic, banal commentary slop, often accompanied by a question to “drive engagement” and waste as much of your time as possible. I just found out that the category name for this genre of software is reply guy tools. Amazing. Posted 23rd February 2026 at 1:11 pm Recent articles Writing about Agentic Engineering Patterns - 23rd February 2026 Adding TILs, releases, museums, tools and research to my blog - 20th February 2026 Two new Showboat tools: Chartroom and datasette-showboat - 17th February 2026 This is a note by Simon Willison, posted on 23rd February 2026. definitions 49 twitter 161 ai 1869 generative-ai 1656 llms 1621 slop 35 ai-ethics 270 Monthly briefing Sponsor me for $10/month and get a curated email digest of the month’s most important LLM developments. Pay me to send you less! Sponsor & subscribeRelated Articles
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Originally published at https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/23/reply-guy/#atom-everything.