The Mighty Are Falling
What publications can learn from haphazard AI-produced content, among other nefarious ethical quandaries
Future-focused website Futurism.com published an article today outing Sports Illustrated for publishing not just AI-generated web content but also completely fabricating backstories and personalities for these AI authors using computer generated headshots. While in this article, writer Maggie Harrison points to other conglomerate-owned sites like CNET, Gizmodo, The A.V. Club among other, for-the-most-part respected digital publications, who’ve also been caught red-handed for using AI to write articles riddled with inaccuracies, TSI takes it one step further with their complete fabrication of authors.
What they’ve done here is something one might see on an internet Alternate Reality Game, or something made as a work of fiction, because that’s what it is. Someone in their “news” room had the audacity to purchase AI-fabricated headshots, which at first glance resemble actual human beings, and then write fictional bylines and bios using these images.
Of course, these were likely generated by AI as well because they read as idyllic snapshots of the author’s life, spinning tales of spending time at the family farm, or with their dog. Truthfully, I don’t know how these part-respected publication, part-content mill publications work nowadays, but it seems like anyone is able to write an article and submit to these publications. If it fits, they publish it.
Maybe this is where the issue that rises with AI is; so much of the content on the internet nowadays is written by random people, who aren’t vetted on if they’re qualified to write on a certain topic or not. Anyone with a keyboard and internet connection can crank out ten piece-of-shit listicles for a third rate content generation agency.
Through an agency is how The Sports Illustrated and parent company Agency Group tried to cover their asses and pass the buck, throwing a knuckleball to AdVon Commerce. They basically chalked it up to “well we didn’t publish this, we’re not responsible, this third-part is.” Typical corporate blameshifting that we’ve come to expect in recent times. Whether or not AdVon is truly to blame here isn’t really the point of this though, because they’re a pawn in the game of profit prioritization, and a further trend of cognitive dissonance in the writing space brought on by the growing AI technology we’ve seen in recent months/years.
People on the internet generally don’t respect writing as a profession. Maybe its an overgeneralization but it’s really not that big of a stretch. They think the words they spend hours a day reading online just materialize out of thin air. This isn’t exclusive to consumers though; this is also exactly how these big business executives think of content writers. These conglomerates were chomping at the bit to replace the actual human beings who keep their pockets lined with Artificial Intelligence, to save a dollar, and we’re seeing how it’s been blowing up in their faces.
This might not be such a big deal to the general population, but as these publications began to use AI, we saw the general weirdness of AI writing, as well as inaccuracies and plagiarism, pointed out by respected sources. In these cases massive corrections were issued, along with tucked-tail apologies and excuses and promises of “doing better,” but it doesn’t really change what will likely speed a dramatic change to the content is written online.
I for one could care less about AI dominating the space of clickbait garbage that’s spit out ad nauseam a thousand times a minute on the internet, and maybe it will hasten the destruction of “The 5 Best Ways To Wash Your Ass”-style writing that’s been passed off as journalism in recent years. But it will also crumble the foundations of these publications as they are outed by intelligent human beings when the AI models they use to produce their instant content are fabricating nonsense that the people who publish it are too lazy to read through even once before throwing it up in hopes of engagement. The general public might not care, but any self-respecting journalist will/should think twice about sending their feature to The Sports Illustrated, and it won’t be long before the Arena Group revert back to the AI well.
Perhaps there will be a time where AI goes through enough upheaval and self-advancement to the point where a computer-produced article and a human-produced article are nearly indistinguishable. Hell, there’s probably already AI writing out there that people, even me, have been fooled by. But for now, it goes to show that the what AI is producing at current, might not be all that worth paying attention to.
And this goes to show larger publications and conglomerates that they might be better off actually utilizing the teams of people they have under them, rather than banking on the quick buck and salvaging their reputation later, when the House of Cards comes tumbling down.
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