AI-Powered Soap Operas Are Dominating X—And Their Makers Are Reaping Profits

For half a year, my husband made everyone believe that I embezzled millions from the company I founded, including our own daughter. As I sat in a federal courtroom, convinced I was about to lose my freedom, the doors suddenly swung open. My 9-year-old son entered, carrying an old blue backpack, looked directly at the judge, and proclaimed, “Your Honor. I know who set my mom up. They’re in this room.”

This is how a thread on X appeared in my feed one day. I realized the first-person narrator likely wasn’t real, and that following this thread would plunge me into a sentimental tale of good overcoming evil. In reality, the author is not a mother on trial, but rather a self-proclaimed 21-year-old stock trader from Nigeria who generates stories using AI—and gets compensated for it by X.

I discovered this while contemplating the rise of these brief tales of redemption filling my feed. It’s probably my own doing; I occasionally click on these clichéd stories—just to see what unfolds next—and the algorithm took notice. In this instance, the author is one of many benefiting from X’s Creative Revenue Sharing program, which rewards posts that drive engagement on the platform. To participate, a creator must become a Premium X user, possess at least 500 verified followers, and achieve a minimum of 5 million impressions over the preceding three months. The program aims to encourage “authentic, high-quality content,” and certainly some of the funds go to creators genuinely producing that.

However, compensating for viral posts creates opportunities for exploitation. Some participants resort to “rage baiting,” crafting shocking content to elicit comments and views. In May 2025, X filed lawsuits against 8 Vietnamese creators and 25 “John Does,” claiming they fraudulently profited from the program by posting fake AI-generated content and artificially boosting engagement with bot-driven comments. Earlier in April, X sought to limit payments to “aggregators” who primarily shared news from other sources and threatened consequences for those who misused the BREAKING tag to attract attention. On July 16 of this year, X announced the removal of millions of posts that plagiarized already-published content from others.

It remains uncertain how X views the AI-generated story clutter that has overtaken my feed. (The company, now part of xAI—which is itself part of SpaceX—declined to respond to my inquiries about this.) Most stories are misleadingly presented as genuine first-person accounts, despite their obvious fabrication. Often, creators describe themselves in their profiles as storytellers. While it’s challenging to prove that the actual creators are AI models, the vast majority exhibit telltale signs. The posts are manipulative, simplistic, and anything but genuine.

Rob Cover, a professor at Australia’s RMIT Digital Ethnography Research Centre, who researches AI-generated content, analyzed the structure of these posts for me in an email. It’s as formulaic as a sonnet. It begins with a rage-baiting setup: “an innocent individual is unjustly fired, evicted, scammed, denied their rightful place on public transport, or subjected to judicial overreach.” This is followed by a resolution: “The underdog is vindicated while the antagonist is defeated, humiliated, and shamed (often representing a public shaming),” Cover explains.

In numerous stories, narrators possess sealed documents that turn the tables on their tormentors, frequently in divorce disputes or handling a relative’s estate. Or it could even be a straightforward scenario: an airline passenger fiercely insists on their assigned seat, leaving rude moochers to endure a walk of shame to the back of the plane.