Sports Illustrated Published Articles by Fake, AI-Generated Writers
futurism.com
futurism.com
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.
The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.
Who even reads these articles? Does anyone get benefits?
I think the industry term for this is "made for advertising content".
It certainly could be. Go here.[1] Use prompt "Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition cover." Under "Advanced", select model "ICantBelieveItsNotPhotography". Click Generate.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20230913163653/https://www.msn.c...
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?
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.
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.
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.
In all fairness, "content" telegraphed that from the first time it was used in the online sense. I still don't understand why people are willing to use it to refer to their own work.
I feel like it's not just the companies, but consumers/ audiences don't want to pay for most internet services unless it's something like infrastructure services where it somehow viscerally seems "sensible" and "right" to do so.
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.
Then get into arguments in the comments about how you really are a machine.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/10/pak-n-save-sav...
They can do in-painting and controlnet. But left on its own, it’s still pretty bad.
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.
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).
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.
Looks like they're still working out the kinks. I look forward to the internet three years from now, where AI-generated authors have matching LinkedIn profiles and active social media accounts.
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.
you could have stopped right there
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.
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.
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.
https://www.klgates.com/Federal-Court-Rules-Work-Generated-b...
That's not what the article says.
The article says that an AI cannot hold copyright. This is not the same as AI content cannot be copyrighted. As I said before, a paintbrush cannot hold copyright; that does not mean a painter who used a paintbrush can't hold the copyright to the work.
This is basically the same thing as when that guy left a camera out and PETA tried to get the monkey that took the photo to be assigned copyright [1]. PETA failed; animals cannot hold copyright and the guy that left his camera out can.
[1]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/judge-says-monke...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...
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
This is the same challenge that humanity has faced since the invention of the wheel.
The 1960 high school dropout could work at Jiffy Lube and excel. Even to one point owning the store.
The 2020 high school dropout at Jiffy Lube has the attention span of a goldfish, pumped up on drugs his entire life, needs to know between this tool for this vehicle, that this brand needs this, that there are now 200 different oils, and no matter what happens even if he did excel that the store will be sold to a VC firm that will knock it down to put up a cheaply made 6-plex where three of the units are full time tax-free Airbnb rentals.
We have/are absolutely exceeding the ability of everyone, let alone the below average.
Half the time I look at what I need to know and wonder how most people are getting by.
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?
Probably better to just admit to it to avoid the usual Streisand effect.
Has it started happening at newspapers of record yet?
Oh well, we were always a Sport Magazine household anyways, better writing.
0% probability it was AI-generated.
Bad human writing exists too.
"Sports is the toy department of human life." - Howard Cosell
Doing it mechanically doesn't seem any worse.