Yet another odd wrinkle in the case of Lil Tay‘s death hoax.
The 14-year-old went viral in 2017 for raps in which she flexed with cars she couldn’t drive and wads of cash she could barely fit in her little hands. Then she disappeared, reportedly after her father took custody and didn’t want her to be an internet celeb.
We didn’t hear from her until Wednesday morning when the first post to her Instagram in about five years claimed she and her brother had died. The announcement read in full:
“It is with a heavy heart that we share the devastating news of our beloved Claire’s sudden and tragic passing. We have no words to express the unbearable loss and indescribable pain. This outcome was entirely unexpected, and has left us all in shock. Her brother’s passing adds an even more unimaginable depth to our grief. During this time of immense sorrow, we kindly ask for privacy as we grieve this overwhelming loss, as the circumstances surrounding Claire and her brother’s passing are still under investigation. Claire will forever remain in our hearts, her absence leaving an irreplaceable void that will be felt by all who knew and loved her.”
If that post seemed super vague, generic, and even cliché, there may be a reason.
We of course now know that Tay did NOT die. She came forward about 24 hours later to say her IG had been “compromised by a 3rd party” who was spreading misinformation.
Related: Lil Tay’s YouTube Bio Was Changed To Disturbing Message MONTHS Ago!
However, the mystery of who wrote the post remains. Her ex-manager highly suspects this was not a prank by a hacker but rather intended by Tay and/or her brother Jason Tian to get back in the spotlight. Maybe the plan was a comeback, maybe it was just to try to wring some money out of sympathetic fans, who can say? But the latest clue is an unexpected one!
The US Sun was sus about the announcement early on, especially after Tay’s father Christopher Hope‘s cold reaction to the “news.” So they did an experiment — entering the text of the IG post into ZeroGPT.
ZeroGPT is a new tool teachers, editors, and others can use to assess how likely it is that a passage was written by AI. Using the same tools that AIs like ChatGPT use — culling from real human words across the internet to create a high tech blend of plagiarism and crowdsourcing with no original thought — the app can give a best guess if the writing was from such a program.
In this case, the death hoax post, which was deleted after Tay came forward, was judged with 88.8% probability to have been written by AI. That’s pretty darn high! That’s a pretty positive test result, with the exception of one sentence:
“Her brother’s passing adds an even more unimaginable depth to our grief.”
Was the brother’s death sentence tacked on after the fact? Makes sense, considering how much it felt like an afterthought. We mean, if BOTH your children died, would you say that? Or say one of your children died, then halfway through the post mention, “oh yeah the other one too”?
Obviously ANYONE could have used an AI program to write such a thing. But why? Maybe to get maximum sympathy?? To look like a post mourning a child — by mimicking lots of real ones grieving parents had posted? Ick.
[Image via GMA/Paramount/YouTube.]
