Carnegie Mellon University researchers analyzed over 200 million tweets discussing COVID-19 and related issues since January.

Roughly half of the accounts discussing the virus — including 62% of the 1,000 accounts with the most influence — appear to be bots, the researchers said in a new report published this week.

Researchers identify bots using artificial intelligence systems that analyze accounts' frequency of tweets, number of followers, and apparent location.

Among tweets explicitly discussing "reopen America," researchers found that 66% of tweets came from accounts that are possibly humans using bot assistants to spread their tweets more widely, while 34% of tweets came from bots themselves.