Kimi K3.1 Pro: a leaked brief alleges a paid, unlabelled influencer campaign

A follow-up to yesterday's top story: screenshots of what's said to be a creator brief for Moonshot's Kimi K3.1 Pro show posts needing pre-approval, no 'paid partnership' label, no need to tag or link Kimi, and scripted lines such as '5x cheaper open-source Opus 5.5' and 'China is one month behind the US frontier'. The screenshots haven't been independently authenticated and Moonshot hadn't responded when we checked, so treat this as an allegation, not a proven fact.

Why it mattersSome of the 'this new model beats Claude' posts in your feed may be paid ads. Test models on your own work before switching, and if you ever pay creators to post, UK advertising rules (the CAP Code), the FTC in the US and X's own rules all require a clear #ad label.

How we knowCompany figures are labelled as their own claims; anything we couldn't verify is labelled as a report or a claim.