[HN Gopher] Sports Illustrated Published Articles by Fake, AI-Ge...
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Sports Illustrated Published Articles by Fake, AI-Generated Writers
Author : hellohihello135
Score : 143 points
Date : 2023-11-27 18:53 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (futurism.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (futurism.com)
| dpflan wrote:
| > "After we reached out with questions to the magazine's
| publisher, The Arena Group, all the AI-generated authors
| disappeared from Sports Illustrated's site without explanation.
| Our questions received no response."
|
| What is The Arena Group? (https://thearenagroup.net/). It's a
| publicly traded company for one. (Stock price: AREN
| (NYSEAMERICAN) $2.76 -0.03 (-1.08%))
|
| > "The Arena Group is an innovative technology platform and media
| company with a proven cutting-edge playbook that transforms media
| brands. We aggregate content across a diverse portfolio of over
| 265 brands, reaching over 100 million users monthly."
|
| - "Our Brands": https://thearenagroup.net/our-brands/
|
| So, basically, an entity that has people's eyeballs, content
| doesn't matter that much does it? But brand does (SI has
| notoriety for millions of people). I'm guessing ads are the main
| business here, therefore content generation in all ways that get
| people's attention is the goal (for cheap).
| c420 wrote:
| >I'm guessing ads are the main business here, therefore content
| generation in all ways that get people's attention is the goal
| (for cheap).
|
| Yep. Last week they added a pop up requesting to disable ad
| blockers. You can decline and still read but it will pop up
| again on the next article.
| skilled wrote:
| This battle will not be won by anyone other than the people using
| these tools to their advantage to pump and dump.
|
| The genie is long out of the box now. Future iterations of LLMs
| will not get worse but better. And already now, something like
| GPT-4 easily bypasses human detection if the output is inherently
| controlled by a human.
|
| Bad AI content can be detected super easily. ChatGPT is limited
| by its system prompts and it will always take the "least effort"
| way to answering your question, be it a question or an
| instruction to write an article. Repetition is a massive issue
| with 3.5 and Google can scout that out blindfolded.
|
| If you want to mess with your own reputation then by all means
| use AI. The average internet user will not be any wiser about it.
| I would be very surprised if Google took action against these
| types of campaigns based on user feedback as opposed to an
| implementation in their own algorithms.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > This battle will not be won by anyone
|
| you could have stopped right there
| isoprophlex wrote:
| The internet has gone past the stage of enshittification.
|
| Everyone knows, or intuits, that the game is up. This is the
| end game, the Shit Squeeze, where the last drops of goodness
| are wrung by force from what once was something exciting... and
| the flames are being fanned by generative AI.
| ggpsv wrote:
| The game has been up for a while, this just takes into hyper-
| drive.
|
| But don't forget, you _can_ opt out of this corporate and
| consumerist side of the internet. It's over when you're
| convinced that you cannot do so.
|
| For me personally, this has made it easier to step away from
| places on the internet that had already started to go down
| the drain. It's as if the shitty part of internet finally
| consumes itself out of existence.
|
| Instead, I now follow small personal blogs and niche forums
| where this is not an issue. Just people posting because they
| still believe in sharing and connecting, despite of
| generative AI.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Is this any worse than assembly-line journalism, where writers
| are churning out low-quality content en masse?
| altairprime wrote:
| It's different in one way in particular: AI-generated content
| is in the public domain in the US, since copyright isn't
| applicable until a human's creative input occurs. That's either
| better or worse, depending on your viewpoint!
| lesuorac wrote:
| That's not really how it works.
|
| That'd be like saying all oil paintings are in the public
| domain because paintbrushes can't hold copyright. The
| copyright goes to the person triggering the generation of the
| content similar to how if you use blur tool in photoshop you
| don't suddenly lose copyright.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| [delayed]
| ghaff wrote:
| There is also a ton of stuff that has more or less formulaic
| sections where a person can cut and paste paragraphs that they
| could have written had they spent more time. This is what I've
| found ChatGPT/Bard somewhat useful for. I may reject. I will
| certainly selectively extract sections. I'll augment. But they
| can give me some useful material to provide background and
| otherwise flesh out the meat of a piece.
| partiallypro wrote:
| Yes, because it's faster and cheaper. You can now just outright
| create thousands of spam articles in an hour, or less, with
| only one person using prompts. SEO spam is already horrendous
| and is making search engines worse, publishers using this
| outright spam to both game SEO and advertisers is not great,
| imo. The problem is that there is plenty of backlash on bigger
| players doing this, but no one cares about smaller players
| doing it. Eventually that puts bigger players at a
| disadvantage, and they'll have to also start doing it enmasse.
| I think that's why we see them all slowly dipping their toes.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| Kind of, because now 1 person can do the job of hundreds, or
| thousands, and now you'd either have to:
|
| 1. Invent new (bullshit) jobs for the thousands to do
|
| 2. Pay those thousands money to live (basic income)
|
| 3. Send them off to die, fighting for you and the 1 person
| commanding the AI, in the next major armed conflict
| bdcravens wrote:
| They could also find work doing something more productive.
|
| This is the same challenge that humanity has faced since the
| invention of the wheel.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Some of the writers may have been trying to work up to
| better jobs.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| And why not real jobs for the thousands? Why does it have to
| be bullshit jobs?
| gred wrote:
| I suppose it's the last little fig leaf being blown away (by
| the combined blast of two thousand NVIDIA Tesla A100 cooling
| fans).
| fullshark wrote:
| Seems fundamentally dishonest, which makes it worse regardless
| of quality..no?
| costanzaDynasty wrote:
| Every time an SI article finds me its happens to be by a
| confirmed human, however its tends to be the biggest fluff piece
| as if almost dictated by the persons agent.
|
| Oh well, we were always a Sport Magazine household anyways,
| better writing.
| owlninja wrote:
| How do I know this writer is real?!
|
| SI has fell off the cliff awhile back, I guess this is just
| trying to squeeze what you can from the name for as cheap as
| possible?
| blamazon wrote:
| Tangentially related: " Microsoft Publishes Garbled AI Article
| [0] Calling Tragically Deceased NBA Player 'Useless' " [1]
|
| [0]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230913163653/https://www.msn.c...
|
| [1] https://futurism.com/msn-ai-brandon-hunter-useless
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| When I was a kid, AI only tried to convince us to leave our
| wives! How times have changed...
| duskwuff wrote:
| FWIW, I don't think that one was even using any kind of modern
| AI. The bizarre phrasing is characteristic of the article
| having been run through a "spinner" tool which randomly
| substitutes words or phrases for synonyms, without any regard
| to context -- which is how it ended up saying he "handed away"
| (passed away) after having played as an "ahead" (forward).
| These tools have existed since the late 2000s, but were mostly
| used by SEO spammers.
| xrd wrote:
| For years, ESPN has put machine generated predictions of upcoming
| games.
|
| https://www.espn.com/nba/preview/_/gameId/401584885
|
| "The Associated Press created this story using technology
| provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar."
|
| Example paragraph:
|
| "The two teams match up for the second time this season. The
| Nuggets defeated the Clippers 111-108 in their last meeting on
| Nov. 15. Jokic led the Nuggets with 32 points, and Paul George
| led the Clippers with 35 points."
|
| 100% generated from the stats table, and totally boring and
| devoid of life. Horrible.
| BorisMelnik wrote:
| at least they admit it:
|
| The Associated Press created this story using technology
| provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.
| rhcom2 wrote:
| Yahoo fantasy football does this with each weekly head to head
| matchup. They're clearly labeled as machine generated ("Powered
| by ChatGPT API") and add a little fun.
| vinayan3 wrote:
| I've these summary articles for sports and stocks.The article
| quality is so low that it's mostly useless information.
|
| Who even reads these articles? Does anyone get benefits?
| makestuff wrote:
| The reason is people will click on them thinking it is an
| interesting story. The publisher (ESPN/Yahoo/etc.) just care
| that you click on the page so the ads load and they get the
| impressions. Some PM probably ran some analysis that machine
| generated articles from a stats table will get X number of
| clicks which will generate Y dollars in ad revenue. There was
| likely no consideration that the overall content of the site
| would decrease. After awhile people stop clicking on them
| because they know it will be a machine generated article so
| eventually the publisher will stop putting them on their
| website.
|
| I think the industry term for this is "made for advertising
| content".
| qrohlf wrote:
| I know some folks who are doing this in the food blogging space,
| see https://tastytango.blog/
|
| It's hard to pin down exactly what I find so unsettling about the
| practice - it's almost like the uncanny valley, but for written
| content that apes human expression instead of imagery?
| deebosong wrote:
| I can relate.
|
| Might not be exactly this, but it makes me feel similar to why
| people hate advertising. Which I believe is, people don't like
| feeling lied-to, and everyone knows that marketers are trying
| to get in your head to manipulate you into manufacturing desire
| or stoking insecurity, all for the purposes of getting you to
| buy their products.
|
| I think people like organic word-of-mouth, but on the flipside,
| hate when they find out that someone was a paid shill to
| posture as an average consumer, but are an industry plant to
| trick and deceive us all lol.
|
| But to your point about why it feels icky and unsettling for
| publications & media companies to just straight-up use AI to
| write articles... seems kinda similar. Many of us are already
| skeptical that journalists & reporters are being censored and
| manipulated into writing with an agenda. But these types of AI-
| generated articles feels a few degrees more dehumanizing and
| Machiavellian. Like, the humanity aspect can all be aped so
| well, that we can just manipulate the masses and assuage their
| needs for a sense of connection without having any souls behind
| it whatsoever, because the masses are viewed as a bunch of
| manipulable "things" to simply extract things from (like
| attention).
|
| I don't like it either, and for me it seems like it's those
| reasons. It feels so... gross and heartless.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| One of the reasons I find so many ads annoying: the copy is
| _complete shit_. It 's usually vapid, kitschy, cringy
| garbage. Most ads are like a Joss Wheadon show; formulaic,
| cookie-cutter "clever" that appeals to the simplest minds.
| Nobody talks like that in the real world.
|
| It also usually feels like the creative process was
| supervised by a bunch of people who seem to think themselves
| a superior sort of human.
| penguinpower wrote:
| This type of behavior will only serve to cheapen content
| across the board. At this point, even the word "content"
| betrays the emptiness of it all - people don't pay for bags
| and boxes of "content" do they?
|
| AI "content" is a nothing-burger. It is inherently devoid of
| "value" and seems like a last-ditch effort to squeegee the
| remaining drops of attention off of everyone's eyeballs
| without actually investing in genuine creativity.
|
| As more and more of this dross floods the Internet, the very
| purpose of the web may be called into question. How can we
| share information with each other if the world's
| library/archive becomes the world's bot-poop landfill?
|
| The Internet has evolved from a shared information system to
| so much more, so I hope this unfortunate phase will soon pass
| and ML tech can be put to more appropriate use than just
| crapping out low-effort "content" all over the place.
| gosub100 wrote:
| The opposite would be great: a web crawler that digests (pardon
| the pun) a 5mb web page (or 20m long-winded video) on how to
| cook a meal and condenses it into _just_ the relevant steps and
| photos.
| qrohlf wrote:
| https://mela.recipes/ does this with its built-in
| browser/parser thing (and it has a bunch more incredibly
| useful stuff).
|
| Highly recommended, it's from Silvio Rizzi of "Reeder" fame
| so it's a one-time purchase built with extreme care by a solo
| dev with excellent product instincts. Huge fan of his work,
| this kind of high-craftsmanship software is just so pleasant
| to use.
| karaterobot wrote:
| The unsettling thing about it is that it's a lie from front to
| back, intended to deceive people into believing there are real
| people sharing recipes, when the people don't exist and nobody
| has ever eaten the food.
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| I now want to make a food blog where it's all AI generated,
| but using exclusively awful recipes.
| JohnFen wrote:
| That's a great idea. But instead of using AI to generate
| it, you should write it yourself while trying to _sound_
| like you 're an AI.
|
| Then get into arguments in the comments about how you
| really are a machine.
| Animats wrote:
| Will the Swimsuit Edition be generated with Stable Diffusion?
|
| It certainly could be. Go here.[1] Use prompt "Sports Illustrated
| Swimsuit Edition cover." Under "Advanced", select model
| "ICantBelieveItsNotPhotography". Click Generate.
|
| [1] https://stable-diffusion.site/
| isoprophlex wrote:
| I got a cover for a magazine called "SUORTS IRLERSTRED" and a
| baywatch-looking woman with extremely weird, lumpy abs
| graphe wrote:
| Much better than the real one. https://swimsuit.si.com/model-
| years/2023
| rossdavidh wrote:
| I mean, the contents of the Swimsuit Edition, like all
| magazine-ish pictures of women intended to generate That Kind
| Of Attention, have been far from organic for quite some time,
| so it's not that much of a difference.
| roughly wrote:
| Of course it's the product review pages.
| nuz wrote:
| The real 'winners' here in the upcoming AI wave will be people
| with existing platforms. They'll replace staff and pocket the
| difference. This one was obvious but it soon won't be.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| That will be balanced out by former readers generating their
| own articles and magazines.
| gumballindie wrote:
| Problem is they'll replace customers too and in the process
| themselves. No sane person wants to consume procedural content.
| tap-snap-or-nap wrote:
| Yet another reason why larger news companies should not be
| prioritised over individual contributions.
| gumballindie wrote:
| We need an aggregator that filters out such "news" agencies.
| Content written by ai? Garbage. Equally we need means to protect
| genuine content - perhaps text DRM.
| rchaud wrote:
| The doomsday clock for the fun parts of the internet is reaching
| midnight. This is what generative AI will be unleashing in droves
| as the software becomes more mature and eliminates the giveaway
| sentences and phrasing.
| rs999gti wrote:
| Just ask the robots to show you a picture of their hands. They
| still have not figured that out, yet...
| MattRix wrote:
| This was a good meme a year ago but these days it's out of
| date. Popular image AIs like Midjourney and Dall-E now do
| accurate hands the vast majority of the time.
| xena wrote:
| Just ask them how to make a pipe bomb. 100% accurate CAPTCHA!
| ggpsv wrote:
| From your perspective, which fun parts are at risk here? For me
| that's certainly not Sports Illustrated and their kin.
|
| This is not entirely new, it has existed since the dawn of mass
| media and the culture industry. It's hyperreality in its full
| form.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| This seems to depend heavily on what you consider 'fun'. I
| agree that AI is taking over these spaces and that it's
| alarming, but OTOH a lot of the examples in this thread (sports
| chatter, recipes etc) are mostly crap, because they are
| dominated by microcelebrities whose persona is intense
| obsession with one topic (and which persona is often just the
| brand of a sophisticated marketing operation).
| z7 wrote:
| I wonder how many journalists are already using AI without us (or
| their employer) realizing it.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| just fine tune on your own writing
| gumby wrote:
| Just a reminder that Ronald Reagan got his start making up
| baseball games: he'd read the ticker with the bare bones of what
| was up (Joe X at bat strike ball ball foul Joe X on 1st Bob Y at
| bat) and then dramatically pretend to be at the game for the
| benefit of the listeners: "Joe X strides to the plate, swinging
| his bat. He swings...strike! The pitcher, impassive, looks at the
| ball...and like lightning throws another pitch, but the ref calls
| it wide."
|
| Doing it mechanically doesn't seem any worse.
| molave wrote:
| I personally don't mind if they use AI to augment human
| writing/introduce interesting personas instead of the formulaic
| intro-bulleted list-conclusion articles from ChatGPT
| nitwit005 wrote:
| > After we reached out with questions to the magazine's
| publisher, The Arena Group, all the AI-generated authors
| disappeared from Sports Illustrated's site without explanation.
| Our questions received no response.
|
| Probably better to just admit to it to avoid the usual Streisand
| effect.
| WhitneyLand wrote:
| How deep does the rot go in all of this?
|
| Has it started happening at newspapers of record yet?
|
| https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_of_record
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(page generated 2023-11-27 23:01 UTC)