Admittedly, I just saw this on the front page, so I'll take a hit to originality for that. I'm also not a huge fan of Vice as a reliable or high-quality news source (given articles like this...), but I feel that the specifics aren't very important for this discussion, only that it is happening. Entities, whether they be people, companies, or other organizations, are using bots en-masse to create false discussion on the web to sway points of view about very real topics.
How far do the implications go for this? The fact that AI are using social media to sway real humans doesn't quite sit well with me, personally, especially as they employ media much closer to home (reddit being a primary example!) than I'd like. Should we be second-guessing every comment we see on a forum site from here on out, as it may not even be posted by a human? And perhaps the more important question- should these corporations, lobbyists, or other entities be held accountable for this "false persuasion"? Is this wrong, or merely the next natural step for the internet?
...and after a but of digging, the manner in which these comments are submitted seem to suggest they were organized by the FCC itself.