Artificial intelligence-written articles are nothing new, but when AI fraudulently impersonates a real journalist, it has to be called out.
Outsourced articles are nothing new
If you think that outsourced articles are nothing new, think again. Except back in 2009 it wasn’t artificial intelligence: it was Indian intelligence.
Yes, back then I was horrified that Indians in India were writing news about Pasadena, California. For example, I quoted from an article (that is no longer online):
City Council Rejects Convention Center Artwork
After a public debate it was decided that alternative artwork be for the Convention Center be solicited.
From STAFF REPORTS
Published: Tuesday, January 27, 2009 | 2:04 PM
In a public debate Monday, the City Council voted to reject the recommendation of the Pasadena Arts & Culture Commission to install works it had solicited and approved by internationally-known sculptors Hans Peter Kuhn and Dennis Oppenheim at the new Pasadena Center plaza. They will instead, accept a recommendation by City Manager Michael Beck to seek alternatives.
Well, James MacPherson spotted my outrage. MacPherson was the person who pioneered this outsourced coverage…and rightfully pointed out that my coverage wasn’t all that stellar.
When you write (eloquently if without regard spelling) “Although I live for opoprtunities [sic] to slam Maureen Dowd, I’m forced to admit that she did uncover some issues with the accuracy of the Pasadena Now coverage” you utterly miss the point.
The worker queried was not a writer or “reporter” but one of our cut-and-paste personnel who copies event listings into our calendar section, verbatim.
How disingenuous of Dowd – and you! – to cite this person’s comments as evidence of ignorance on the part of our writers.
More to the point: What “issues” did Dowd uncover? Every single article and fact we publish is vetted by the editor here in Pasadena.
Even more to the point: Our writers in India are provided with full research background, interview transcripts, and photos – when they produce articles, they have full facts at their fingertips.
FYI, our content is now bolstered by Andre Coleman, for years the city reporter for the “Pasadena Weekly.” Our stories are authoritative and collaborative, blending articles written here with articles written elsewhere.
We have signed up 37 advertisers in a month and are flourishing; the Pasadena Star-News has laid off many and forced unpaid furloughs on the remaining.
If you were to take the time to investigate the model we are developing you would discover it has much to offer to save American journalism and is far from the lame caricature you present.
But you don’t need an Indian at all
A few years later, outsourced journalism had progressed beyond the point of needing cheap foreign labor. The journalism industry found an even cheaper solution. In 2012, I quoted from the late Chris Kim A, who quoted from the Smithsonian blog, on a then-new service called Narrative Science. (Lucky that I quoted it, because Chris posted his account on Google Plus, which is also pining for the fjords. And the blog disappeared also.)
Software is being developed that can use raw data—such as Twitter feeds, company earnings reports and baseball box scores—to automatically produce news articles that seem as though they were written by a real live human. For better or worse, welcome to the brave new world of computerized journalism.
The most prominent example is a startup called Narrative Science, which has made waves (and raised $6 million in capital) by pioneering computer software that analyzes these sorts of datasets and writes everything from stock advice to sports analysis.
We didn’t use the phrase “artificial intelligence” at the time, instead referring to these articles as “computerized.”
And I found a Forbes article authored by Narrative Science from 2012 that has NOT disappeared from the tubes, although Narrative Science is now apparently a FORMER partner of Forbes. Yup, Forbes fired a bot. Excerpt:
“Shares of Red Hat (RHT) have climbed 23.8% over the last three months to close at $51.54 on March 22, 2012. The company is looking to keep that trend going when it releases its fourth quarter results on Wednesday, March 28, 2012.
“What to Expect:
“The consensus estimate is 20 cents per share, up 5.3% from a year ago when Red Hat reported earnings of 19 cents per share.
“For the fiscal year, analysts are expecting earnings of 81 cents per share.
“Revenue is projected to be $291.2 million for the quarter, 19% above the year-earlier total of $244.8 million. For the year, revenue is projected to roll in at $1.13 billion.”
AI fraudulently impersonates a real journalist, Kaitlin Durbin
So what new innovation do we have now? Alleged fraud.
When MacPherson or Narrative Science authored articles, they never pretended that a real person wrote them.
A real person like Kaitlin Durbin.
Durbin was going through a happy time in her life. She was enjoying her honeymoon and taking a much-needed break from her work at Cleveland.com, the online version of the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Her happiness ended when, while still on her honeymoon, she read an article stating that the law director of Ohio’s Cuyahoga County was stepping down.
Under her byline.
An article that she had never seen, much less written.
So who did write it?
The Cleveland.com Express Desk, its service for generating AI articles.
The original September 4 article was updated on September 8 to remove Durbin’s byline, and Cleveland.com states that this was just an innocent error and NOT an attempt to pass AI-generated text off as written by a human.
Now many of you are yawning and saying, “Who cares? They corrected the mistake; move on. And so what if she got tagged for something she didn’t write?”
That’s because none of you is a temperamental writer.
I know how I would feel if text written by someone or something else was posted with my name attached to it. I bet Durbin felt the same.
How does the temperamental writer benefit Bredemarket’s clients?
Now many of you could simply generate your written content by going to your favorite generative AI tool and reprinting the output. (There may be watermarks.)
But if you’re paying Bredemarket $500 or more to write your content, you presumably don’t want me to do that for your work.
Which is just as well, because I write my own first drafts for clients, including the first draft for this blog post.
But I do ask Google Gemini to review my draft articles after I’ve written them. Which is a good thing.
“Typographical Errors: Typos like “outsourcred”, “opoprtunities”, “t4xt”, and “gtoing” hurt credibility.”
I left the second one because reasons.
(Update: and I still missed a typo in the first word of the post.)
But my clients are paying for my 30-plus years of identity, biometric, technology, and marketing (and other) expertise, not my ability to fashion a prompt.
If you have content needs or other needs, such as proposal or analysis needs, talk to me.
