Google's terrible AI Overview thought GTA 6 has a twerk button because one dedicated soul spent 3 months lying about it: "I didn’t even try to make anything with convincing evidence"

Is there a twerking button in GTA 6? No, no there is not, but you'd be forgiven for thinking so, since Google's AI snippet believed the feature could exist. Alas, it's all a hoax, part of an experiment to show just how fallible those auto-generated results are.

Youtuber Jeffrey Phillips is responsible for the ploy. Over the summer, he launched a campaign of misinformation to see how long it would take for Google's algorithms to recognize what he was saying as true and incorporate it into an overview. Not long, it turns out.

Between July and September, Phillips posted about Grand Theft Auto 6 containing a twerk button across numerous social channels. First, he posted it on several subreddits because Google’s AI favors popular Reddit threads. Then, to substantiate his own unfounded claim, he made TikTok videos and fake images of the controller layout and a literal song, to feed the notion that he's an expert.

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In one case, when someone claimed he was lying, he simply said someone in Rockstar called him. That was it, and eventually, it worked. He explains the process from 9:30 in the video above, and by his own admission, it was easier than he thought.

"I was definitely surprised to see that I even showed up on the AI overview," he told Polygon. "Especially since I didn’t even try to make anything with substantial or convincing evidence. I thought at most it would say some people on Reddit think it could be true. I would've never expected my own comments being used as a source though."

Before he started, the question of twerking in the long-awaited sequel brought up a non-committal answer related to dancing in Rockstar's game. Gradually, his comments and claims made their way up the overview, until his posts became a bullet point on the search result - bingo.

Considering he only posted a couple of times a day, this was remarkably easy, showing just how quickly misinformation can travel without human curation. GTA 6 may not yet have a button for twerking, but Rockstar, if you're reading, your first update might already be decided here.

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