> the characters ’n’ and ‘o’ differ by only one bit; an unpredictable error that sets that bit could change GenuineIntel to GenuineIotel.

On a QWERTY keyboard, the O key is also next to the I key. It's also possible someone accidentally fat-fingered "GenuineIontel" , noticed something was off, and moved their cursor between the "o" and "n", and accidentally hit Delete instead of Backspace.

Maybe an unlikely set of circumstances, but I imagine a random bit flip caused at the hardware-level is rare since it might cause other problems, if something more important was bit-flipped.

I like this theory - I can totally imagine some big spreadsheet of processor model names where someone copy/pastes the model name to some janky firmware-programming utility running on an off-the-shelf mini PC on the manufacturing floor, implemented as a "temporary fix" 5 years ago, every time the production line changes CPU model.