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Comment by woodruffw | Hacker News Reader

> When reached for comment, a B&H representative claimed the company’s policy was not to use AI-generated content and that it would “investigate this matter with our content teams.” Shortly thereafter, the article and profile were deleted. But for a month, the story remained online and positioned itself as an expert guide written by a real person and visitors to the blog would have been none the wiser.

Seems like a slight non-story to me: a parsimonious explanation here is that a staff (or contract) editor was given an assignment, and chose to fabricate it instead.

(A more interesting tidbit about B&H: their sales tax hijinks are legendary[1], and significantly predate Amazon's.)

[1]: https://www.dpreview.com/news/4007164682/bh-photo-accused-of...

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At first, I figured that's the explanation, but you're ignoring a more puzzling statement in the article:

> To explain how an AI-generated story written by an AI-generated person was published despite this policy, B&H says it was part of a “test” to identify and protect against such content.

> “Our editors wrote a test article in mid-November as part of their efforts to identify and protect against AI-generated content. They overlooked adding disclosure to the article indicating that it was AI-generated, which was a mistake, and did not delete the article after the test.”

This sounds... rather unconvincing.

Yeah, that's pretty suspicious; I missed that.

Real Principal Skinner saying he only went to the bordello to get directions away from the bordello energy

So, someone had an assignment to write an article, found this on Google Drive (or some other document management system), and hit publish?

IDK, it all seems fairly plausible to me.

Also they tried to report it but their dog ate the form.

Regarding the sales tax “hijinks”, B&H actually won that lawsuit because the judge agreed that the law did not require them to pay sales tax on those payments as the NY AG claimed. It’s not hijinks if they are interpreting the law more correctly than the government.

I think it’s fair to call creative tax dodges “hijinks,” even if they ultimately end up being legal. This is the standard that I’d apply to Apple as well (with their Irish Maneuver).

(Another example of this in B&H’s case is their store-branded credit card, which gives you a NY tax rebate. This appears to be fine legally, but it matches the general trend.)

I wouldn't consider that a tax dodge at all given that the New York State Tax Department had previously issued advisories stating that the way that B&H was accounting for their sales taxes was the correct way to do so[1], and what they were doing was no different from the manufacturer supporting a sale with a drop in wholesale price on the item, which they sometimes do instead of manufacturer coupons. The attorney general was just plain wrong.

[1] https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/tax-authorities/1121150/...

There's no virtue in ignoring tax loopholes, it makes you into a schmuck if you pay more taxes than you're legally required.

Sure; these are non-exclusive properties!

Regarding the B&H complaint, that was in 2019, you can update it with "B&H Photo Prevails in NY Sales Tax Dispute" in 2021 [1].

[1] https://advertisinglaw.fkks.com/post/102h8g1/bh-photo-prevai...

> …a parsimonious explanation here is that a staff (or contract) editor was given an assignment, and chose to fabricate it instead.

The fabricated author biography and photo suggest that it's not just an "oopsie!", especially considering that they also said, "We typically do not create a writer profile unless we use someone more than occasionally". B&H understood what they were doing.

> and chose to fabricate it instead

In large companies usually there are even simpler mundane explanations. Most likely in this case there was no previous company policy, and some local department was running an experiment.

Then it got discovered, policy was established, and article was deleted. Nothing really malicious, nothing really interesting.

> their sales tax hijinks are legendary

Courts ruled in their favor. Don't blame B&H, blame the tax code

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