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The same company that slopifies news stories in their previous big "feature"? The irony.

by input_sh 11mo ago

Zambyte 11mo ago
Been using Kagi for two years now. Their consistent approach to AI is to offer it, but only when explicitly requested. This is not that surprising with that in mind.
- pseudalopex 11mo ago
  > Their consistent approach to AI is to offer it, but only when explicitly requested. Kagi News does not disclose AI even.
  - sjs382 11mo ago
    I think it's generally understood among their users (paying customers who make an active choice to use the service) but I agree—they should be explicit re: the disclosure.
    - jacquesm 11mo ago
      All AI use should have mandatory disclosure.
    - pseudalopex 11mo ago
      Kagi News does not require payment. The articles are indexed by search engines. Anyone can send a link to anyone else or post a link anywhere. The speculation most Kagi customers inferred the articles were AI generated could be correct. Or not. We agree they should disclose in any case.
  - sedatk 11mo ago
    "Kagi News reads public RSS feeds of thousands of (community-curated) world-wide news sources and utilizes AI to distill them into one perfect daily briefing." https://news.kagi.com/about https://news.kagi.com/about
    - pseudalopex 11mo ago
      A daily briefing is AI generated does not communicate all articles are AI generated. And the standard for news publishers to disclose reasons for distrust is every article.
  - freediver 11mo ago
    The code is open source, you can add it as a PR as you see appropriate.
sjs382 11mo ago
I think you're referencing https://kite.kagi.com/ https://kite.kagi.com/ In my view, it's different to ask AI to do something for me (summarizing the news) than it is to have someone serve me something that they generated with AI. Asking the service to summarize the news is exactly what the user is doing by using Kite—an AI tool for summarizing news. (I'm a Kagi customer but I don't use Kite.)
- sjs382 11mo ago
  I'm just realizing that while I understand (and think it's obvious) that this tool uses AI to summarize the news, they don't really mention it on-page anywhere. Unless I'm missing it? I think they used to, but maybe I'm mis-remembering. They do mention "Summaries may contain errors. Please verify important information." on the loading screen but I don't think that's good enough.
  - sedatk 11mo ago
    "Kagi News reads public RSS feeds of thousands of (community-curated) world-wide news sources and utilizes AI to distill them into one perfect daily briefing." https://news.kagi.com/about https://news.kagi.com/about
    - pseudalopex 11mo ago
      On another page is not on page. And a daily briefing is AI generated does not communicate all articles are AI generated.
- input_sh 11mo ago
  https://news.kagi.com/world/latest https://news.kagi.com/world/latest Where's the part where you ask them to do this? Is this not something they do automatically? Are they not contributing to the slop by republishing slopified versions of articles without as much as an acknowledgement of the journalists whose stories they've decided to slopify? If they were big enough to matter they would 100% get sued over this (and rightfully so).
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
imiric 11mo ago
Not all "AI"-generated content can be categorized as "slop". "Slop" has a specific meaning, usually associated with spam and low-effort content. What Kagi News is doing is summarizing news articles from different sources, and applying a custom structure and format. It is a branded product supported by a reputable company, not a low-effort spam site. I'm a firm skeptic of the current hype around this technology, but I think it is foolish to think that it doesn't have good applications. Summarizing text content is one such use case, and IME the chances for the LLM to produce wrong content or hallucinate are very small. I've used Kagi News a number of times over the past few months, and I haven't spotted any content issues, aside from the tone and structure not quite matching my personal preferences. Kagi is one of the few companies that is pragmatic about the positive and negative aspects of "AI", and this new feature is well aligned with their vision. It is unfair to criticize them for this specifically.
- pseudalopex 11mo ago
  > "Slop" has a specific meaning, usually associated with spam and low-effort content. Slop means different things to different people. And anything not human reviewed is low effort in my view.

The same company that slopifies news stories in their previous big "feature"? The irony.

Been using Kagi for two years now. Their consistent approach to AI is to offer it, but only when explicitly requested. This is not that surprising with that in mind.

pseudalopex 11mo ago
> Their consistent approach to AI is to offer it, but only when explicitly requested. Kagi News does not disclose AI even.
- sjs382 11mo ago
  I think it's generally understood among their users (paying customers who make an active choice to use the service) but I agree—they should be explicit re: the disclosure.
  - jacquesm 11mo ago
    All AI use should have mandatory disclosure.
  - pseudalopex 11mo ago
    Kagi News does not require payment. The articles are indexed by search engines. Anyone can send a link to anyone else or post a link anywhere. The speculation most Kagi customers inferred the articles were AI generated could be correct. Or not. We agree they should disclose in any case.
- sedatk 11mo ago
  "Kagi News reads public RSS feeds of thousands of (community-curated) world-wide news sources and utilizes AI to distill them into one perfect daily briefing." https://news.kagi.com/about https://news.kagi.com/about
  - pseudalopex 11mo ago
    A daily briefing is AI generated does not communicate all articles are AI generated. And the standard for news publishers to disclose reasons for distrust is every article.
- freediver 11mo ago
  The code is open source, you can add it as a PR as you see appropriate.

sjs382 11mo ago

I think you're referencing https://kite.kagi.com/ https://kite.kagi.com/ In my view, it's different to ask AI to do something for me (summarizing the news) than it is to have someone serve me something that they generated with AI. Asking the service to summarize the news is exactly what the user is doing by using Kite—an AI tool for summarizing news. (I'm a Kagi customer but I don't use Kite.)

sjs382 11mo ago
I'm just realizing that while I understand (and think it's obvious) that this tool uses AI to summarize the news, they don't really mention it on-page anywhere. Unless I'm missing it? I think they used to, but maybe I'm mis-remembering. They do mention "Summaries may contain errors. Please verify important information." on the loading screen but I don't think that's good enough.
- sedatk 11mo ago
  "Kagi News reads public RSS feeds of thousands of (community-curated) world-wide news sources and utilizes AI to distill them into one perfect daily briefing." https://news.kagi.com/about https://news.kagi.com/about
  - pseudalopex 11mo ago
    On another page is not on page. And a daily briefing is AI generated does not communicate all articles are AI generated.
input_sh 11mo ago
https://news.kagi.com/world/latest https://news.kagi.com/world/latest Where's the part where you ask them to do this? Is this not something they do automatically? Are they not contributing to the slop by republishing slopified versions of articles without as much as an acknowledgement of the journalists whose stories they've decided to slopify? If they were big enough to matter they would 100% get sued over this (and rightfully so).

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

imiric 11mo ago

Not all "AI"-generated content can be categorized as "slop". "Slop" has a specific meaning, usually associated with spam and low-effort content. What Kagi News is doing is summarizing news articles from different sources, and applying a custom structure and format. It is a branded product supported by a reputable company, not a low-effort spam site. I'm a firm skeptic of the current hype around this technology, but I think it is foolish to think that it doesn't have good applications. Summarizing text content is one such use case, and IME the chances for the LLM to produce wrong content or hallucinate are very small. I've used Kagi News a number of times over the past few months, and I haven't spotted any content issues, aside from the tone and structure not quite matching my personal preferences. Kagi is one of the few companies that is pragmatic about the positive and negative aspects of "AI", and this new feature is well aligned with their vision. It is unfair to criticize them for this specifically.

pseudalopex 11mo ago
> "Slop" has a specific meaning, usually associated with spam and low-effort content. Slop means different things to different people. And anything not human reviewed is low effort in my view.