Inside a network of AI-generated newsletters targeting "small town America"

niemanlab.org

28 points·giuliomagnifico··4 comments

Pretty good idea! Especially now that SOTA tokens and email lists are so cheap. I don't understand why the tone of the article is so negative.

Well, this article is an example of journalism: somebody took an interest in some phenomenon and did some digging, made some phonecalls and compiled what they found into a narrative. This is outside the scope of LLM newsletters, and the article quotes people into why they find it distasteful (read: dishonesty)

Would it be that difficult for the LLM generated newsletter to disclose that it's a summary of information provided by humans?

>Would it be that difficult for the LLM generated newsletter to disclose that it's a summary of information provided by humans?

A disclaimer like that would likely make many readers feel "less comfortable" I suppose!

When "AI-generated articles" are disclosed, it upsets people. For instance, see the experiment articles on TechCrunch, The Verge, or the similar websites (I don't remember exactly which one).

The newsletters link to the sources. Clearly most people don’t want to read the whole article - especially if the linked source requires a subscription.

Decades ago there were people who didn’t really read the paper but just scanned the headlines - this is just a modern way of enabling that.

Still, it’s devious to monetize the existence of other content this way.

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