A few months after one of the most important reports relating to the use of fake authors for AI articles, the Tech world‘s attention is rekindled on the use of artificial intelligence to copy other people’s articles. Better to clarify: don’t worry, this article is not written by an AI bot, but by our own Andrea Zanettin (Everyeye.it).
In any case, sources such as 404 Media, New York Post and Engadget highlight the situation. Reference is made to “articles generated by artificial intelligence that they brazenly steal from legitimate media“. Among other things, in the article dated January 22, 2024 in the New York Post we read that the US newspaper has already identified that at least one of its articles ended up at the center of this “circus”.
It appears that the contents involved are even appeared on Google News, although it is necessary to carry out specific searches to find them. In the meantime, the bad guys are even managing to appear higher than the original source in searches, in certain cases, by targeting specific keywords. In short, these “ripoffs” seem to be artfully packaged to desperately try to get traffic.
The names of the portals that publish these “contents”, if they can be defined as such, are usually generic or try to place keywords already in the name. But the “authors”? Just take a look at the relevant page to find myriads of articles written on the same day, something that a human being would not physically be able to do (unless using AI, of course).
In the case of the New York Post, the content came attributed to this “Shawn Johnson” with more than 17,800 pages of results. Some of you may also remember the legendary “Drew Ortiz” from Sports Illustrated. It seems that AI systems (or the bad guys who use them) don’t have too much imagination when it comes to names to adopt. Perhaps, at this point, they trivially use a service to generate false names. Well done to anyone who understands these AIs.
It must be said that Google promptly intervened following the New York Post’s report, explaining that the content violates the policies and for this reason it has been removed. BigG also took the opportunity to indicate that AI content is removed if it is “spam” designed to gain traffic on the backs of others.
In short, the battle over IA articles It’s getting more intense than ever. Who knows if this article will also be “engulfed” by similar portals, but in that case the elusive authors will have to do something more than click on the “I’m not a robot” box.