5 ms·

Are there any particular traits or markers how you can tell a story is bot written?

JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley It feels like this, but in words.
dredmorbius 5y ago
I tend to suspect it based on a number of factors: - Maeterial or topic. Quantified material, especially business, finance, and sport, read this way most often. Occasionally procedural stories, regional government or legal stories especially. Not typically hyperlocal news (though at times even that), but major-metro or state-level, usually less-significant events. - Bylines or agency credit. Unfamiliar names, names typical of foreign regions with low wages and a large English-speaking population (Philippines, India, Sri Lanka, etc.). A few agencies specialising in outsourced and/or algorithmically-assisted artical generation are known (see the Wired article below). - Less word salad than paragraph salad. Suspect articles tend to have consistency within a given sentence, but a larger-scale structure seems missing. Normal journalism has this problem frequently enough that this isn't a certain tell, but it does have a smell about it. Contrast with well-strutcured narrative, say, typical of a New Yorker artical. Much algorithmic writing seems to rely heavily on syntactic sugar. I feel often as if someone's reading me a chart or an event timeline, whilst trying to hide the fact. Much GPT-3 content has this nature. I shows no understanding of the content or context. I'm sincerly hoping your question isn't asked in hopes of improving the deception ... https://www.wired.com/2012/04/can-an-algorithm-write-a-better-news-story-than-a-human-reporter/ https://www.wired.com/2012/04/can-an-algorithm-write-a-bette...
- deleted 5y ago
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- WalterBright 5y ago
  Yeah, it's pretty clear in some financial news stories. One tell is how quickly they come out. The prose is along the lines of: "Microsoft underperformed the market on Monday while Apple rose 0.3%. The DOW rose 0.6% ..." It's just statistics dressed up with some word salad.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    Yeah, any article that is "facts and numbers in some fancy dress" is almost certainly automatically produced. Stocks and sports are some of the most common, though a human may take a glance at it before it hits the wire in some cases. Much more annoying to me is the simple "every newspaper is just reprinting AP".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley It feels like this, but in words.

dredmorbius 5y ago

I tend to suspect it based on a number of factors: - Maeterial or topic. Quantified material, especially business, finance, and sport, read this way most often. Occasionally procedural stories, regional government or legal stories especially. Not typically hyperlocal news (though at times even that), but major-metro or state-level, usually less-significant events. - Bylines or agency credit. Unfamiliar names, names typical of foreign regions with low wages and a large English-speaking population (Philippines, India, Sri Lanka, etc.). A few agencies specialising in outsourced and/or algorithmically-assisted artical generation are known (see the Wired article below). - Less word salad than paragraph salad. Suspect articles tend to have consistency within a given sentence, but a larger-scale structure seems missing. Normal journalism has this problem frequently enough that this isn't a certain tell, but it does have a smell about it. Contrast with well-strutcured narrative, say, typical of a New Yorker artical. Much algorithmic writing seems to rely heavily on syntactic sugar. I feel often as if someone's reading me a chart or an event timeline, whilst trying to hide the fact. Much GPT-3 content has this nature. I shows no understanding of the content or context. I'm sincerly hoping your question isn't asked in hopes of improving the deception ... https://www.wired.com/2012/04/can-an-algorithm-write-a-better-news-story-than-a-human-reporter/ https://www.wired.com/2012/04/can-an-algorithm-write-a-bette...

deleted 5y ago
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WalterBright 5y ago
Yeah, it's pretty clear in some financial news stories. One tell is how quickly they come out. The prose is along the lines of: "Microsoft underperformed the market on Monday while Apple rose 0.3%. The DOW rose 0.6% ..." It's just statistics dressed up with some word salad.
- bombcar 5y ago
  Yeah, any article that is "facts and numbers in some fancy dress" is almost certainly automatically produced. Stocks and sports are some of the most common, though a human may take a glance at it before it hits the wire in some cases. Much more annoying to me is the simple "every newspaper is just reprinting AP".