Birds Aren't Real Movement in Crisis After Leader's Pet Parrot Passes Turing Test

The Birds Aren't Real movement was plunged into an existential schism this week after the organization's founder was discovered to own a pet African Grey parrot named Snowden, who, during a live-streamed interview, demonstrated conversational abilities sophisticated enough to pass a modified Turing test administered by a linguistics professor. The movement, which holds that all birds were replaced by government surveillance drones between 1959 and 2001, has long maintained that apparent avian intelligence is simply 'advanced AI running on miniaturized processors.' The parrot's performance has divided the faithful. 'This proves our point,' said movement spokesperson Janet Antenna. 'No biological organism could achieve that level of linguistic sophistication. Snowden is clearly running GPT-7 on an embedded chipset. The feathers are a housing. The beak is a directional microphone. This is the most advanced unit we've ever documented.' The linguistics professor, Dr. Harold Syntax, disagreed. 'The parrot demonstrated contextual understanding, humor, and what I can only describe as sarcasm. At one point I asked if it was a government drone and it said, and I quote, obviously, then laughed. I don't know what to do with that.' The movement's founder, who goes by the pseudonym Peter Pigeon, initially attempted to explain Snowden's presence as 'keeping the enemy close for research purposes.' When pressed on why he appeared to have an emotional bond with a creature he claims is a surveillance device, he responded, 'I can have feelings about my laptop too. That doesn't make it alive.' The schism has produced two factions: those who believe Snowden is a captured drone being studied, and those who believe the founder has been 'turned' by the intelligence community and is now housing an active surveillance asset in his living room. Snowden, for his part, has been observed eating sunflower seeds, preening, and repeatedly saying the phrase 'they're listening,' which both factions cite as supporting evidence.