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Examples of AI rip-offs making their way into Google News
- ttoinou 3y agoFound the same problem three weeks ago, it's quite disturbing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38769556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38769556
- el_duderino 3y agohttps://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HI89zbksPTIJ:https://www.404media.co/google-news-is-boosting-garbage-ai-generated-articles/&hl=en&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HI89zb...
- Solvency 3y agoGoogle only boosts AI-generated SEO spam, why would Google News be any different?
- chrisan 3y agoDoes it really matter if it is AI or not at this point? SEO spam has been a thing for a long time that has made their way into top rank spots for some queries making it frustratingly hard to find answers.
- Spivak 3y agoOur glorious human curated SEO spam, their savage AI generated SEO spam. If you make the war against SEO spam in general they'll catch themselves in the crossfire.
- refulgentis 3y ago[flagged]
- mythas 3y agoIt’s a nice closed loop now so it’s inevitable that ai generated content will win google search. One can pump out content, see how it scores, and iterate until they have an ai trained to top the google search results. It’s already so frustrating looking for real info. Soon it will be impossible.
- sidewndr46 3y agoif other AI trains on the "news" this generates won't it converge on articles that are nothing but "buffalo buffalo" for millions of pages?
- refulgentis 3y agoI'm not sure why training on a diverse set of words would lead to converging on one word (but maybe there's a joke going over my head :P)
- jsnell 3y agoThe joke is referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffal...
- villson 3y ago"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo." Is the longest grammatically correct sentence in English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffal...
- nyc_data_geek1 3y agoIt's the longest grammatically correct sentence composed entirely of one repeating word.
- jerbear4328 3y ago
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- dotcoma 3y agoI am very surprised that the number of people who use something else — Kagi or Brave Search or Qwant or DDG or Mojeek — is so small.
- pixl97 3y agoIf someone tells you defaults don't matter, they are lying to you.
- arsome 3y agoI've tried Kagi, Brave and DDG for extended periods and ultimately their results are even worse in most cases and leave you going "hmm, I wonder what Google would give me". It's the enshitification of the entire internet, not just Google unfortunately.
- curtis3389 3y agoSeriously, I'm surprised at how many devs haven't seen DuckDuckGo's bangs: https://duckduckgo.com/bangs https://duckduckgo.com/bangs I use them all the time for work. !mdn for MDN, !dnab for .NET, !npm for NPM, !py3 for Python3 docs, !debman for Debian Manpages, !w for Wikipedia, !a for Amazon, !g for Google when you really need it. I'm not affiliated with DDG; I just really, really love it.
- aaomidi 3y agoThis exists in Google too with just writing “MDN” at the end of your query.
- PetitPrince 3y agoBangs are no not "asking the search engine to return all page of a particular website" but rather "directly use the search engine of that particular website". It's a bit using the a particular search engine from your browser.
- aaomidi 3y ago
- Unfrozen0688 3y agoI despise these AI generated SEO blogs ruining the internet. And I know people who “work” on this. They just ChatGPT prompt some shit, long posts, and paste it in. Sure its “relevant” but all reads like those recipe blogs and just repeats the same thing. I use DDG/Brave search, but it may only be a matter of time.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoI have been told by the artist (Jonathan Scott, the Doleful Lions) that this article, perhaps even the entire site, it AI created: https://oldtimemusic.com/the-meaning-behind-the-song-the-rats-are-coming-the-werewolves-are-here-by-doleful-lions/ https://oldtimemusic.com/the-meaning-behind-the-song-the-rat... Fuck this new web.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kristopolous 3y agoIt takes under 5 seconds to recognize the gpt smell. I guess some people think this is still compelling?
- MaxBarraclough 3y agoHow long until reputable outlets start publicly promising never to have AI write their articles? It would be great for me, the reader, if this caught on. It would let me know which outlets to take at least somewhat seriously, and which to disregard out of hand for not making this commitment. I happen to know that, say, Microsoft, currently is publishing AI-generated news articles, with predictable results. [0] It's easy enough for me to disregard everything I see on Microsoft news, but the set of outlets I need to remember to ignore is only going to grow. Somewhat related: StackOverflow has already banned AI-generated answers. [0] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/02/tech/microsoft-ai-news/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/02/tech/microsoft-ai-news/in...
- rideontime 3y agoI knew Stack Overflow had gone back and forth on the issue, so I'm happy to see they finally listened to their actual contributors. https://stackoverflow.com/help/ai-policy https://stackoverflow.com/help/ai-policy
- Leo_Verto 3y agoThe author didn't even remove ChatGPTs disclaimer in the last paragraph. Other articles on the site however seem human-written.
- naltroc 3y agoI'm glad I keep bookmarks of my favorite pages
- dylan604 3y agowhat happens if the links rot in your bookmarks?
- scblock 3y agoThe linked article gives no examples unless you "sign up" to actually read the thing. I don't know who this is, why should I give them any consideration? Toss this in the garbage with all the rest.
- frantathefranta 3y ago404media was formed by the exodus from Vice Media's bankruptcy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/404_Media https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/404_Media
- rideontime 3y agoThe "About" link may be useful: https://www.404media.co/about/ https://www.404media.co/about/
- lynndotpy 3y agoI share the frustration about article paywalls, but this is unnecessarily inflammatory. 404media are good people with good repute in the infosec space (and it's the only journalism I pay for). They're all former Motherboard staff, with names you might recognize: Joseph Cox, Samantha Cole, Emanuel Maiberg, Jason Koebler.
- fallingknife 3y agoSo what is the author saying here? Seems to be: "journalist" reading other articles and writing their own derivative articles - good. Machine doing the same thing - bad. The fact that so much of the news media produces no original reporting is the problem. The fact that they can easily be replaced by machines is a symptom.
- kristopolous 3y agoI've really only heard of quantity being rewarded in this sphere and not quality. It's often piecemeal work where a freelancer is writing articles and they get paid based on all the metrics that we hate. It's set up to be as close to lorem ipsum as possible. How would you radically transform the industry in a way that those polluters go away?
- krapp 3y agoYou can't. "quantity over quality" is the most efficient path to maximum profit with minimum cost, thus the path capitalism will always optimize for, given no other incentives. Capitalism will capitalize, and AI looks as much like a magic money machine as any technology ever has. The only thing that will stop this behavior is if AI generated content is proven to be less profitable than human generated content, which is a possibility if quality drops low enough, or the capabilities of AI versus cost stop making financial sense. But that has to happen at scale, and it might require a collapse of the tech industry in general, because everything, everywhere will be integrated with AI at that point.
- kristopolous 3y agoRight. I'm a not so pure anti capitalist; I see the tendencies of the system and I don't like the results. I strongly believe we can do better but it's complicated and hard. I've been working in startups, equity, fund raising ... I have a large portfolio and do lots of investing so my views are conflicted and complicated - the most profitable stuff we're making isn't great.
- rchaud 3y ago
- inference-lord 3y agoStarting to really wonder if the information space we call the web is in-trouble? Like it actually seems like it's happening, everything is getting polluted with AI dog shit? My Instagram feed is under attack too.
- morkalork 3y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38832136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38832136 Everything is. Even totally unimportant stuff. Sad beans.
- rchaud 3y agoReal-people writing is paywalled. AI garbage and disinformation will always be free.
- ChatGTP 3y agoGoing to take a while to adjust for this. Then we have to ask, where do all the writers get their info , how do they avoid it ?
- jabroni_salad 3y agoHopefully with cool journalistic methods such as calling a 1st degree source and talking to them.
- bamboozled 3y agoSo I know this is pedantic but even the person on the other end can be faked now.
- rchaud 3y agoReal reporters do things like pursue FOIA requests, interview people and link to original documents. If the source you're looking at mostly provides commentary on other people's coverage (e.g. the Verge summarizing a paywalled NYT article), that's a good signal for detecting quantity over quality publications.
- djoldman 3y agohttps://archive.is/UG1wQ https://archive.is/UG1wQ
- thedrbrian 3y agoSo is this more evidence for the dead internet theory ?
- TrackerFF 3y agoNot related to news articles, but I've noticed the rise of "AI influencers" that are ripping off people. Their operation goes like this: 1) Steal/scrape content from human influencers (photos, videos) 2) Generated a face using some generative model, and deep fake it onto the data scraped from (1). 3) Automate the process with text and engagement, using some GPT model to generate the description / dialogue / etc. 4) Deploy on IG/TikTok/Onlyfans/etc. 5) Purchase followers. Wait or pay for some "This influencer is not real!" article, which is then again re-generated and spread further by some AI news generator. Real people see the content on their social media feed, and contribute to "organic growth". Clueless people start paying for the "exclusive" OF content and what not. EDIT: Also, I've seen an explosion in AI/ML generated celebrity thirst traps on social media. Not outright porn, but FB/IG "friendly" photos - usually in the setting of some happening (academy awards, met gala, and general red carpet stuff). Thousands of comments and likes.
- rchaud 3y agoThere are entire hour-long deepfakes of Musk and others in a webinar pitching shitcoin investments. The cat left the bag some time ago.
- rideontime 3y agoOver this past holiday my very ill uncle excitedly told me about Dr. Oz's new diabetes cure, endorsed by Tom Hanks, that he was considering. Infuriating.
- masto 3y agoI think it's already over. Fixing the destruction generative AI has wrought upon the Internet would be like unscrambling an egg. I'm an optimist when it comes to technology, but I also believe that being able to know what's real and what's not real is fundamental to survival as a species, and I think we've seeded our own destruction here. I'm confident buildings are already being built with formulas someone asked ChatGPT for help with, doctors and nurses are getting advice on how to diagnose and treat patients, subroutines are being copied and pasted into safety-critical software, etc. We put the lead in the gasoline, and we're going to face the consequences.
- RobRivera 3y ago>seeded our own destruction I mean, you can always just not rely on the internet for news and narratives and such. And yes it is possible. It is possible to work in this economy, raise a family, eat well, and not need to be bombarded by fake anything, whether generative AI or human authored. I think the atomic bomb is more credible as a seed of human destruction. By the way does anyone know anything about any launch codes? Also - have you seen the whereabouts of John Connor?
- tshaddox 3y ago> I mean, you can always just not rely on the internet for news and narratives and such. That commenter went on to list examples where one’s personal usage of the Internet would irrelevant to one’s wellbeing. It won’t affect one’s level of care received from doctors or one’s safety when crossing a bridge.
- blibble 3y ago> I mean, you can always just not rely on the internet for news and narratives and such. it's not me I worry about it's all the facebook users, who can also vote
- rurp 3y ago>I think the atomic bomb is more credible as a seed of human destruction. Nuclear weapons absolutely are an existential risk. >By the way does anyone know anything about any launch codes? I don't have any top secret knowledge about current systems but have read about historical command and control systems and it's a terrifying slice of history. Now there is starting to be talk about integrating AI into those systems, which I find horrifying.
- lynx23 3y agoGoogle is almost useless since a few years now. Generative AI might have made it worse, and more obvious, but Google not going anything about aggressive SEO practices was already the beginning of the end.
- gorbachev 3y agoIt'd be interesting to hear some inside intel on how seriously is Google taking this.
- ChatGTP 3y agoWith all their recent extra efforts in AI research (Gemini etc) I wonder if they’ve given up on search being the core of their being and are committing to AI products ?
- jeffbee 3y agoWithout an example of how you would prevent this, this article amounts to just whining.
- bombcar 3y agoHopefully it eventually leads to adpocalypse where the value of ads trends to zero and the whole damn thing collapses on itself.
- jeffbee 3y agoIt might. But the key actor here is the person who used an LLM to paraphrase another article. The fact that Google indexed it is hardly even relevant. The claim that Google is "boosting" it is meaningless.
- rideontime 3y agoIf you read the article, you'll see that they're specifically talking about Google News including these rip-off sites, not Google merely indexing them. I would consider that a form of "boosting," especially considering that some actual news sites that create their own content are excluded.
- ttoinou 3y agoI provided one example here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38769556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38769556
- jeffbee 3y agoThat does not seem to be an example of how you would fix this.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sakopov 3y agoYouTube has been running ads non-stop showing deep fakes of well-known cryptocurrency icons like Michael Sailor and Anatoly Yakovenko asking people to send some crypto to an address and get 2x back. It feels like the bottom is officially falling out.
- liendolucas 3y agoI'm gonna say something that probably some people won't like. I'm impressed by how much money the industry is moving by this so called "AI" movement and literally having zero concrete improvement on one's every day life (and by this I mean common people, not developers/techies). I haven't seen, nor witnessed anything that you can benefit from all this AI hype. All that has done is opening the door for polluting the web with crap. And we keep on and on with the madness of training, wasting money (and resources) on gpus, generating tb of data. For what? To generate text, images? If someone can actually point out a real example on the real world how all this madness helps to a better world, much appreciated, because honestly I don't see it.
- Erazal 3y agook I'm biased because I work in exactly this sector: automated meeting minutes make life easier and are powered by LLMs. US employees spend 18 hours / week in meetings so that is a noticeable improvement IMHO.
- eurekin 3y agoI'm pretty sure everyone made a version of that. Makes me think, if it would be useful to open source that hodgepodge of scripts
- Erazal 3y agoyes I've definitely thought quite a few times about open-sourcing our company code (AI note-taker for remote meetings). But then the hard thing is Kubernetes on top... And as always not sure our "closed-source", "employee only" code would be useful to anyone not working with us :/
- ponderings 3y agoIs that real time? Does it have to be?
- yellow_postit 3y ago
- ramenbytes 3y agoPrompted by comments foreshadowing the end of search engines being useful, I wonder if we'll see a return to pre-search engine practices given that in the hypothetical we would come full loop from low signal to noise back to low signal to noise.
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- hereme888 3y agoSo, in the larger context of how AI will be used by people seeking a quick buck, was Sam Altman right in the need for something like World Coin, or are there other proposed alternatives?
- justanotherjoe 3y agoThe polluting of the internet by ai is very significant. I'm already very ashamed i was so excited with ai and what i thought would change lives for the better. I had a relative told me of a tool he used on the internet that can create hundreds of articles in the click of a button (and i assumed a fee). It's disgusting and it's suffocating. I honestly dont know any good way forward.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- scudsworth 3y agogenerating semi-convincing crap to game pay-for-click economics at incredible scale was always the usecase
- rmason 3y agoThere is a local SEO firm that is going full speed ahead in generating massive numbers of these AI generated blog posts and news articles boosting clients ratings. I have told them they may gain in the short term but that Google will figure out what is going on and they will be punished for going along. Yet it is still working and I am going to have to eat some humble pie the next time that i see them.
- StreetChief 3y agoGoogle earns a ton of money from people paying for keyword searches. Ai content increases the competition for these keywords driving increased revenue for Google. I wouldn't expect them to do anything about the so called problem, because it's only a problem for end users searching.
- fy20 3y agoToday I was asking ChatGPT some questions and it gave me back an oddly specific statistic about website performance. I figured it was a hallucination, but I was interested to see if it was real so tried to find a source. First I searched Google for the exact phrase, and there were a tonne of articles with basically the same wording. So all AI written content. Then I used the data filter to give me everything from before June 2022 and there were the same numbers worked differently, but nothing specifying the source. Then I tried before 2018 and found one article referencing the data from a press release by Akamai in 2009. It contained a URL, but it's no longer live. There was also one other article dated 2015 that had the same sentence that ChatGPT gave me. However the article sounded like it was written by AI, so I'm guessing somebody just set the post date wrong on the article.
- Jones4000 3y ago[dead]