{"id":589610,"date":"2026-07-17T00:53:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T00:53:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/589610\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T00:53:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T00:53:13","slug":"airbnb-ceo-brian-cheskys-x-account-was-hijacked-in-an-ai-slop-hack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/589610\/","title":{"rendered":"Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky\u2019s X account was hijacked in an AI slop hack"},"content":{"rendered":"

Airbnb<\/a> cofounder and CEO Brian Chesky appears to have been the target of a cyberattack, a source with knowledge of the situation tells Fortune. On Monday, Chesky\u2019s X account shared a multi-post thread setting out a bullish view on \u201creal-world asset tokenization,\u201d a term from the crypto world that describes converting traditional assets like stocks into digital tokens.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been quietly keeping an eye on real-world asset tokenization for a while now,\u201d the account wrote<\/a> in the now-deleted series of tweets. \u201cMost of it is noise. But underneath the noise, something real is happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Chesky is an active user of X, where he routinely shares product updates, earnings commentary, and lessons from building Airbnb with his more than 1.2 million followers. He\u2019s even used the platform to crowdsource<\/a> suggestions for business improvements, such as lowering cleaning fees and, ironically, crypto payments<\/a>, which earned praise<\/a> from X owner Elon Musk. \u201cThis kind of interaction with users is awesome,\u201d Musk wrote in response<\/a> to the 2023 call for ideas, urging other companies to take note. Commentary from Chesky on crypto is out of character for his accounts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This week, though, Chesky\u2019s replies were filled with accusations of \u201cAI slop,\u201d a term that describes low-quality content produced by artificial intelligence.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Users pointed out aspects of the Chesky \u201ctokenization\u201d post that suggested it had been cooked up by AI. \u201cOne thing that really makes AI writing distinct is the lack [of] commas,\u201d Bloomberg\u2019s Joseph Weisenthal wrote<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Communications strategist and Rostra founder Lulu Cheng Meservey, meanwhile, warned<\/a> that \u201cCEOs damage trust when they post unfiltered claudeslop.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

When Fortune analyzed Chesky\u2019s thread through AI-detection tool Pangram, the system flagged it as 100% AI-generated. The posts have since been deleted<\/a>. Airbnb declined to provide a public comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The thread appeared as a reply to a user<\/a> referencing Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev\u2019s recent interview<\/a> with CNBC, in which he discussed the growing market for tokenized real-world assets.<\/p>\n

The hacked posts were flagged to X and escalated to platform security teams as a \u201chigh-profile compromise,\u201d according to correspondence between Airbnb and X employees reviewed by Fortune. X secured the account on Tuesday evening, and Chesky was then able to regain access to his account.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The rise of AI slop<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chesky has previously praised the use of artificial intelligence, telling CNBC<\/a> in February that the tech \u201cis the best thing that ever happened to Airbnb.\u201d The serial founder is also preparing to launch<\/a> a new AI lab focused on building new models, according to Bloomberg.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the surge of low-quality AI-generated content is becoming a bigger headache for both business leaders and creatives, and the volume of mediocre images, videos, and text has grown so overwhelming that Merriam-Webster named<\/a> \u201cslop\u201d its 2025 word of the year. A new analysis<\/a> by AI detection platform Pangram found that roughly one in four long-form social media posts are now AI-generated. Nearly half of X\u2019s longer \u201cArticles\u201d contain AI-written material.<\/p>\n

Leaders across industries are concerned. Substack CEO Chris Best warned<\/a> in September that AI could clog already crowded feeds with low-quality content and strain an attention economy he referred to as a \u201cscarce resource.\u201d YouTube CEO Neal Mohan dedicated a section of his annual letter<\/a> to \u201cmanaging AI slop,\u201d declaring it a top priority for 2026. Oscar-winning director Christoper Nolan told<\/a> The Telegraph this week that Gen Zers are \u201cutterly rejecting\u201d AI slop with reactions that are \u201cimmediate and harsh.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey see it for what it is very quickly,\u201d The Odyssey director said. \u201cIt\u2019s much easier for them to identify it, because it grew out of an online world they know really well.\u201d<\/p>\n

A recent report<\/a> from social media management platform Sprout Social found that 56% of respondents say they encounter \u201cAI slop\u201d on social media often or very often, and 83% say they see it at least sometimes. Gen Z is more likely to rebuff the content, too. Half of respondents said they have unfollowed, muted, or blocked accounts if the content felt like AI slop.<\/p>\n

Fortune 500 CEO security\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chesky is not the first Fortune 500 CEO to have a social media account compromised.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2016, Meta<\/a> founder Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest<\/a> accounts were briefly compromised<\/a> by a group called OurMine Team.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey @finkd (Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s Twitter handle) we got access to your Twitter & Instagram & Pinterest, we are just testing your security, please dm (direct message) us,\u201d the now-deleted post read.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2019, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey\u2019s account was briefly taken over<\/a> for 20 minutes, an action that led to the platform to permanently disable<\/a> its \u201ctext-to-tweet\u201d (SMS) feature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Airbnb cofounder and CEO Brian Chesky appears to have been the target of a cyberattack, a source with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":589611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,783,289,290,88851,4035,18,19,17,1114,753,82],"class_list":["post-589610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-airbnb","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-brian-chesky","tag-cryptocurrency","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-social-media","tag-tech","tag-technology"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116932589388087579","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/589611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}