A popular Twitter bot that used artificial intelligence to reply to tweets has been suspended after Tesla CEO Elon Musk accused it of being a ‘scam crypto account’. The bot, called ‘Explain This Bob’, was also associated with a memecoin called Bob Token (BOB) that saw its price plummet after the suspension.

‘Explain This Bob’ was created by Prabhu Biswal from India and used OpenAI’s GPT-4 model to understand and respond to tweets by users who tagged the account. The bot had over 400,000 followers before it was banned. The bot was also linked to the ERC-20 memecoin Bob Token (BOB) that was launched in April 2023.

Musk claimed the account was a scam in a tweet on June 18, in response to one of the bot’s tweets. The account was apparently suspended soon after.

This sure looks like a scam crypto account. If so, it will be suspended. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 18, 2023

Musk’s accusation was a reversal of his previous impression of the bot, who had tweeted ‘I love Bob’ in response to one of its tweets on April 20. That tweet is also featured on the project’s website.

I love Bob — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 19, 2023

Some observers believe Musk thinks ‘Explain This Bob’ is being used as a marketing strategy to boost BOB’s price. According to CoinGecko, the suspension caused the price of BOB to drop by over 30%.

Despite the suspension, the hashtag ‘FREEBOB’ has been trending on Crypto Twitter. Many users argue that BOB is not a scam coin and the suspension is unjustified. They claim that the launch of the token was ‘fair’, that the token is ‘fully decentralized’ with no tax mechanism, and that the team did not allocate any tokens or airdrops for themselves before the launch.

So does @elonmusk plan to provide any proof of $BOB being a scam or are we just expected to take his word for it? Intrigued to understand what constitutes a scam crypto account @elonmusk? Renounced contract 0 tax 0 team tokens Fully decentralised Fair launched Can you explain… pic.twitter.com/0U2nuUsyqB — Crypto Boss (CB) (@Cryptoboss2000) June 18, 2023