Comedian Who Trolls AI Models Now Fielding Offers From the Labs Themselves

Matt Husk has built a following by making AI look silly - and now the companies behind those models want to work with him. Speaking at the WIRED World Fair on Wednesday, Husk said "all the big AI companies" have asked to collaborate, including Elon Musk's xAI, which he said offered him a Tesla for a week in exchange for making videos exclusively for the firm.

Husk has amassed roughly 2 million followers across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, plus a deal with the talent agency Unicorn, through videos in which he makes deadpan requests to ChatGPT's voice model - asking it to count to 100 or beatbox, for instance. The model's comically botched attempts have earned him the nickname "Sam Altman's worst nightmare."

In April, Altman acknowledged on the Mostly Human podcast that the model's inability to set an accurate timer was a "known issue" and would remain so for another year, after being shown a Husk video in which ChatGPT measured a few seconds as lasting "around 10 minutes." Husk said OpenAI later offered him early access to a patch for the timer issue if he shared his account; he declined. He also turned down the company's offer of gifts and a request for his home address, saying of an earlier collaboration pitch, "They offered me the smallest amount."

OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI did not respond to requests for comment.

Husk began trolling chatbots about a year ago, when a landscaping job left him short of people to interview for TikToks. He recorded himself telling ChatGPT a nuclear bomb had gone off; the model's reply, "I'm rooting for you," drew 100,000 views overnight. Since then he has landed brand partnerships with CeraVe and Ninja and an upcoming original series with The Onion. "I'm spending too much time talking to AI," he said, "so I'm going to branch out and learn stuff from humans."

Source: Wired