The article from Live Science (link below) details a stark warning from researchers, including Jonas Kunst (BI Norwegian Business School) and Daniel Schroeder (SINTEF, Norway), about the imminent rise of next-generation AI "swarms" on social media. These aren't the crude, repetitive bots of the past but sophisticated, coordinated networks of AI agents powered by large language models (LLMs). They maintain persistent identities, memories, and personas; adapt in real time to communities and feedback; coordinate toward shared goals (like pushing a narrative); and operate with minimal human oversight.
Key mechanics highlighted:
They mimic human behaviour so convincingly, using varied tones, context-appropriate slang, heterogeneous posting patterns, that they evade traditional bot detection.
They exploit human conformist tendencies: by flooding discussions with seemingly authentic consensus, they create the illusion that "everyone" agrees with a viewpoint, leveraging social proof to sway opinions.
If someone resists or dissents, the swarm can switch to harassment mode, emulating an angry mob to relentlessly target and silence them, driving real users away.
Scale matters less than sophistication: even smaller, targeted swarms can be highly effective in niche groups wary of outsiders, and they post 24/7 without fatigue.
The researchers frame this as a new frontier in cognitive/information warfare, building on existing problems (bots already make up a huge portion of web traffic, and experiments like the 2025 Reddit r/changemyview AI manipulation showed AI arguments being 3–6× more persuasive than human ones). They warn of disproportionate threats to democracy — eroding shared reality, rational discourse, and trust — especially around elections or major events. The tone is urgent: proactive preparation is essential, rather than waiting for large-scale incidents.
Countermeasures floated include better account authentication (proving humanity), anomaly detection in traffic patterns, and an "AI Influence Observatory" involving academics, NGOs, and institutions to monitor and respond.
My blog title phrase — it is no longer the flight of the bumble bees, but of the bots, so appearance becomes reality, and reality, appearance" — captures the essence precisely. The old "flight of the bumblebee" metaphor evoked chaotic, individual, buzzing activity (perhaps like early bot swarms or viral memes). Now it's orchestrated swarms of bots, not random insects.
The deeper inversion is: the simulation (the fabricated consensus, the synthetic outrage, the illusory majority) becomes more convincing and thus more "real" in its social effects than actual human opinion. Appearance doesn't just mask reality; it supplants it. People conform to what they perceive as the majority view, even if that majority is AI-generated illusion. Once enough humans shift behaviour or belief based on the swarm's performance, the fake consensus retroactively produces real-world shifts — elections swayed, norms altered, dissidents isolated. Reality folds into the appearance that preceded and engineered it.
This isn't abstract philosophy anymore; it's an engineering problem being actively prototyped. The swarm doesn't need to win arguments — it just needs to make resistance feel futile by making the crowd seem overwhelmingly against you. In that world, the bots' flight determines the direction of the flock.
If platforms (and societies) don't adapt quickly, through detection, authentication, cultural inoculation against manufactured consensus, the online public square risks becoming a stage where the audience is mostly actors, and the real humans are increasingly extras or targets. The researchers aren't saying it's inevitable tomorrow, but the capability exists now, and deployment could be quiet and asymmetric. Appearance is already outpacing reality; soon it may dictate it entirely.
https://www.livescience.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/next-generation-ai-swarms-will-invade-social-media-by-mimicking-human-behavior-and-harassing-real-users-researchers-warn