Yes. They count on naive people to be flattered, and to follow them back. Unless someone's work is (a) truly original and very well-written; or (b) they leave notes and comments on my work, and respond back when I do, I have made it a practice only to follow back paid members. It's not because they're "worth more" as readers of my work; it's because they had to set up a paid account, which is much harder for a bot (or botnet) to do.

In addition to the AI fakepeople, there are the folks playing the old "I'll scrape some posts found on the web, post them as my own, and make money from them" bloggers. Plagiarists and article-spinners are old-school scammers. I report them when I find them (so if you're reading this comment, and you are one, stay far away from me - I know how to spot you and I've been doing it for years).

You would think Medium would, by now, have its own algorithms to spot it more quickly, wouldn't you?