Maybe this isn't news to some people here, but it was kind of surprising to me. These are the standings of cf round $$$1085$$$ (unofficial standings):
The account tickcross.y (ranked 9th officially) seems suspicious to me, going from around $$$1000^{th}$$$ place in div $$$3$$$ s to $$$9^{th}$$$ place in a div $$$1$$$ in just a few months. If I were to guess, I would say that this guy is a cheater, but okay there is a slight chance that it is some high-rated user messing around.
Also, I think that the account ChatGPT4.0 ($$$1^{st}$$$ place unofficially) is an account dedicated to testing $$$AI$$$ models, so I think that there is a good chance that this user used some $$$AI$$$ model (probably an expensive one for the time being) to $$$AK$$$ the contest unofficially.
I guess this means that soon the ratings here really will be close to meaningless throughout the entire rating range. The skills gained through actual effort won't be meaningless, but the actual rating will be, and that is kind of disappointing.
I mean, it's also possible that the AI just googled the editorial and went from there. I once gave a problem to an AI, its first instinct was to google to see if the problem was on CF, and take the solution from there.
I think that whether or not it did that doesn't matter too much. in a few months it'll be able to $$$AK$$$ div $$$1$$$ s no problem. Also, it seems a bit risky to give $$$AI$$$ models access to the internet like that.
tickcross.y is indeed suspicious, check: https://mirror.codeforces.com/submissions/tickcross.y/contest/2207
let's check on the time problems were solved:
B: 12 minutes
C: 6 minutes
D: 8 minutes
E1: 17 minutes
E1 -> E2: 15 minutes
F: 35 minutes
well, especially solving D in div. 1 in 8 minutes is suspicious, let's hope they keep doing this
as well, as we can see a gap, between solving 1 problem in div. 1 and 7 problems in div. 1 in 3 weeks