The Duskbloods Subreddit Tricked The Twins With Fake Bosses

AI loves Reddit. There are billions of posts and comments combined, offering a treasure trove of human-powered responses perfect for training models like Gemini and ChatGPT on how to sound authentic. Google even signed a $60 million-a-year deal to access Reddit's data, but there's a crucial flaw in citing a self-regulated internet forum.

Trolls, memes and unreliable info snowball into a deadly cocktail that makes the already often flawed AI models hallucinate. And since Reddit is not a database or wiki that strives first and foremost to offer accurate information, it is difficult for a mindless algorithm-driven robot to judge what is credible and what is a rubbish post. Early OpenAI models based it on karma, but that's not exactly a good measure of authenticity, as crap posts often go viral and rack up thousands of likes. Just look at Hollow Knight Silksong.

There are endless posts from players who have been led on wild hunts by AI, or stumbled upon wildly incorrect information about their favorite titles, but what happens when the game isn't even out yet? In the case of FromSoftware's upcoming Switch 2 exclusive, The Duskbloods, that means completely made-up bosses and mechanics confidently ripped from a subreddit pretending the game has already been released.

John Duskbloods, Bugout Billy, Lycan Vrykolakas: The Made-Up Duskbloods That Only Exists On Gemini

As reported by Video Game Town, Gemini has been gaslighted by these “Duskposts”. It boldly claims that there's an area called Pus Mines where you can find the Myrmidon of Loss, and that Blood Mistress Elizabeth is a “fan-service heavy” boss with mechanics ripped from Sister Friede in Dark Souls 3. Not to mention the werewolf Lycan Vrykolakas, which is widely considered the “most cinematic” fight in the game. Apparently.

I asked Gemini who the most popular Duskbloods boss is, and it told me that Sanguiphisto is S+ tier, although fans are also fond of Bugout Billy, an unlockable character from the Underdusk zone. In terms of playable characters, the community favors John Duskblood because of his “sword and gun combo.” It tells me he's the “poster-child Bloodsworn character” and was revealed in the first trailer. Meanwhile, the most popular level is the Gallowgate Rail Terminus, where trains run players over mid-fight.

AI is probably the future. But a super-intelligent algorithm that sucks more water than an entire city combined can't even check if a game has been released yet. That has been a problem since the early days of these tools. If you've ever googled the solution to a puzzle or tried to find a walkthrough, you've no doubt seen completely made-up facts gathered from internet forums without any critical thinking, because AI can't think – it just collects. That means the Twins are telling Dark Souls players that they needs a +10 weapon to beat Queellag, or that sharks are older than the moon.

But with less than 1% of users checking the source behind these outlandish facts, it unfortunately turns this little anecdote from a funny story about John Duskbloods and made-up bosses into mass disinformation widely spread by some of the biggest tech companies in the world, leading to new phenomena like chatbot psychosis. Another notch on the AI belt, and a worrying sign of where things are headed as companies ramp up with even bigger data centers. Sorry to end on a sour note, but hey, at least we got Bugout Billy out of it.