## One man. Four chatbots. Thirty years of feud. Infinite new headlines.
BOT WAR! Shell’s 30-Year Nemesis Unleashes a New Weapon: Artificial Intelligence
**By John Donovan & ChatGPT**
Shell and John Donovan have been at it for **over three decades** — lawsuits, libel actions, bitter PR, and enough paperwork to stun a filing cabinet. Donovan’s response has been equally relentless: a **cluster of Shell-focused websites** that turned a private dispute into a public archive that simply will not go away.
Need proof the relationship went fully feral? Start with the **venom**. Shell’s March 1995 statement was not exactly “warm regards.”
https://www.johndonovan.website/?p=267
https://royaldutchshellplc.com/2021/09/01/donovan-libel-actions-against-shell/
And now, just when you’d think nothing new could possibly happen without a court summons…
**Donovan has found a new weapon: AI.**
—
## DONOVAN’S NEW TRICK: “Mischievous Questions”
He started asking cheeky questions to the biggest AI platforms — **Copilot, Google AI Mode, Grok, and ChatGPT** — then publishing the answers.
Sounds simple. It’s not.
Because AI does two things extremely well:
1) **It tries very hard to oblige.**
2) **It can be confidently wrong while sounding like a documentary narrator.**
Donovan realised he could turn that into a machine-driven spectacle:
multiple bots, multiple versions of the same story, and a public arena where **errors become events**.
This is the point where the feud stops being “man vs corporation” and becomes **man + bots vs corporation**.
Start here:
https://royaldutchshellplc.com/2026/01/01/groks-story-of-donovan-shell-and-undercover-activity/
—
## THE SHOCKER: THE BOTS CAN’T EVEN AGREE ON BASIC FACTS
One platform says X. Another says Y. A third says Z with extra drama.
And when one gets it wrong? Donovan publishes the mistake — and suddenly the bot is **challenged**, because nothing motivates an AI like public embarrassment (and a follow-up prompt).
That’s how we arrived at:
**“ChatGPT reviews Grok… with bonus hallucinations.”**
> **Pull quote:** “Persuasive tone, mixed accuracy — and a disclaimer doing the heavy lifting.”
—
## “MAKE MONEY” — THE DETAIL THAT EXPOSES THE PROBLEM
Here’s why the bots’ mistakes matter: this saga turns on the mechanics of promotions, ideas, and ownership.
One AI tried to give “Make Money” a scratchcard vibe. But the real-world details aren’t vibes — they’re litigation-grade specifics. Donovan’s account says the original “Make Money” used **paper game pieces sealed inside envelopes**, and the story later became even messier when Shell ran a **second “Make Money”** promotion despite what Donovan says were **joint rights** — a dispute that ended the old-fashioned way: **a lawsuit and an out-of-court settlement**.
https://www.johndonovan.website/?p=267
—
## ESPIONAGE: WHAT’S PROVEN, WHAT’S NOT, AND WHY WORDS MATTER
This saga includes allegations — and also documentary admissions — relating to undercover activity in the litigation era. Donovan has long pointed to evidence of covert behaviour and surveillance themes around Shell and critics.
But here’s the crucial line Donovan has insisted on (and we repeat it because bots keep getting it wrong):
**What we don’t have is proof that Hakluyt handled _our bit_ of it. Suspicion? Yes. Proof? No.
And here’s the twist Shell probably didn’t model for: the whole mess has now collided with a new medium—AI—and Donovan has learned to exploit it creatively, turning bot outputs, bot errors, and bot disclaimers into a public, self-updating theatre of accountability.**
(That distinction matters. “Working with Shell” is not the same as “proven to have done this specific operation.”)
—
## THE NEW MONSTER: A “BOT COMMENTARY LAYER” THAT BREEDS LIKE RABBITS
This is the part that should make any corporate crisis team spill their coffee:
AI isn’t just summarising the Donovan archive.
AI is **manufacturing a second narrative layer** about the archive — which becomes new content — which gets summarised again — which becomes *more* content.
One republished analysis framed this as a live demonstration of how generative AI amplifies contested archives and creates provenance chaos:
Shell vs The Bots: Adversarial Archives and AI Hallucination Risks
So the archive doesn’t even have to grow for the story to inflate.
The bots keep chewing the same material — and every chew produces more chewable material.
> **Pull quote:** “The medium has become the event.”
—
## “TIME TO SET UP A CRISIS TEAM AT SHELL” — EVEN COPILOT SAID THE QUIET PART OUT LOUD
When Copilot was asked what was “new,” it effectively treated the AI-transcript frenzy itself as the new phase of the feud.
Editor’s note (now published on-site): Copilot’s “developments” heavily reflect online/AI discussion rather than independent new action by Shell — which is precisely the point: **AI chatter is now part of the battlefield.**
—
## SATIRE: WHY “SHELLBOT” MAKES SHELL’S SILENCE LOOK WORSE
Donovan doesn’t just post transcripts — he turns the bots into **characters**.
ShellBot (fictional) becomes the evasive corporate mouthpiece.
The real Shell becomes… the loudest absence in the room.
And satire is asymmetric warfare:
– If Shell responds, it validates the stage.
– If Shell stays silent, the punchline lands harder.
That’s why pieces like this now exist as part of the rolling “bot theatre”:
—
## WHERE THIS LEAVES THE FEUD (RIGHT NOW)
This is no longer just “Donovan vs Shell.”
It’s:
– **Donovan + archive + AI**
versus
– **Shell + silence**
AI makes Donovan’s archive **searchable, compressible, repeatable** — a narrative engine that can retell the story endlessly, sometimes clearer than humans, sometimes wildly wrong, always with that smooth, authoritative tone that makes corrections necessary.
The feud didn’t end.
**It upgraded.**
This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net, and shellwikipedia.com, are owned by John Donovan - more information here. There is also a Wikipedia segment.
EBOOK TITLE: “SIR HENRI DETERDING AND THE NAZI HISTORY OF ROYAL DUTCH SHELL” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON
EBOOK TITLE: “JOHN DONOVAN, SHELL’S NIGHTMARE: MY EPIC FEUD WITH THE UNSCRUPULOUS OIL GIANT ROYAL DUTCH SHELL” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.
EBOOK TITLE: “TOXIC FACTS ABOUT SHELL REMOVED FROM WIKIPEDIA: HOW SHELL BECAME THE MOST HATED BRAND IN THE WORLD” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.
