AI-Generated Rubbish Is Taking Over Newsstands

The internet is very rapidly being filled with a load of AI-generated rubbish. They’re taking over your WhatsApp forwards, your social media feeds and now your newsstands.

So I find myself writing yet another issue on AI slop.

AI vs. Local Journalists

Joe Minihane is a reporter for the Ashland Daily Tidings. In his first month at this publication, he “skied the slopes of Mount Ashland, ate at 15 restaurants in Roseburg, hiked the Owyhee Canyonlands in Malheur County, took in Autzen Stadium and Multnomah Falls, and visited the Neskowin Ghost Forest on the Oregon Coast,” according to an investigation by Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB). 

OPB was looking into this matter, because to common knowledge the Ashland Daily Tidings had shut down in 2023, after serving its community faithfully for 145 years. So they reached out to Joe Minihane, who claimed to be based out of the United Kingdom, roughly 7000km away from Oregon, and had absolutely no clue who wrote these articles. Turns out, all these articles were AI slop.

Read: AI slop is already invading Oregon’s local journalism - OPB 

Now, much has been discussed about this AI slop phenomenon - a rising onslaught of low quality AI-generated content filling up the internet at an extraordinary rate. It is now posing an existential threat to journalists.

According to an article by Seattle Times, Bert Etling, a former editor at the Daily Tidings had set up a Google alert for any mention of the publication, only to watch it fade away from discussion entirely. Until last year.

According to Etling’s Google alerts, the Daily Tidings rose from the ashes again, with eight reporters publishing five stories a week. He contacted another one of them who denied having written stories for the Daily Tidings since it closed down. The other ‘reporters’ were either stolen identities of real journalists, or did not exist at all.

Like the non-existent “Aaron Washington” who wrote nine articles in a single day, covering “everything from the Tacoma city budget to the weather to a cold case police mystery to a feature on a Seattle preschool,” according to a report by the Seattle Times.

Read: ‘Do we exist?’ A robot news site shadows a Northwest town | The Seattle Times 

The previous owner of the maliciously resurrected publication tried to sue this AI slop op. His lawyers told him it would be like “pursuing a phantom”, since this operation was being run outside the US, likely from China, the Seattle Times report quoted him as saying.

Throughout the past decade, many influence operations around the world had tried to resurrect defunct news sites for deceptive purposes - now it's been turbocharged with AI, since you don’t really need people to write all this trash.

Since July 2023, NewsGuard has been tracking these fake news websites spewing incessant AI-generated content - and have compiled 1,133 of them (and counting), in 16 languages, using names that appear quite authentic.

Read: Tracking AI-enabled Misinformation: Over 1100 ‘Unreliable AI-Generated News’ Websites (and Counting), Plus the Top False Narratives Generated by Artificial Intelligence Tools - NewsGuard 

Thanks to automated digital advertising systems, which do not discriminate or distinguish between real journalism and AI-generated slop, these sites are raking in good money. 

Further investigations into these sites led NewsGuard to uncover a network of 167 Russian-linked websites masquerading as local news outlets, using AI to spread misinformation about the Ukraine war. They also identified a Chinese-government linked website using machine generated text to spread false claims around the U.S. operating a “bioweapons lab in Kazakhstan infecting camels to endanger people in China.”

America’s Got Hijacked (By AI Slop)

The other day, my mother got this video on WhatsApp showing a man with a monkey appearing on the US reality show America’s Got Talent (AGT).

He narrates a sad story about how he chanced upon this monkey while wandering in the Californian woods after losing his wife and kid, and decided to raise the little ape. He even decided to try teaching this monkey how to play the violin.

The monkey then goes full Joshua Bell with the violin, which seemed to impress my mother. She asked me if it was real, what do you think? 

Yes it was AI-generated, of course. Violin-playing monkeys are as rare as unicorns and dragons these days. I did a quick search online and found a number of different AI-generated videos showing monkeys playing violin at AGT (click here, here and here).

The YouTube videos made a small disclaimer of it being AI-generated, but the WhatsApp forwards are quite insistent that it's real - seemed to nearly convince my mum, despite years of ceaseless insistence from my side to not believe in online crap, especially on WhatsApp.

So if you see a zebra playing Sebastian Bach’s cello suites while swaying like Yo-Yo Ma, rest assured it's AI-generated.

Here’s a “very real” image of a dragon dressed as Santa Claus, imagined by Dall-E. Merry Christmas!

Have you been a victim of AI?

Have you been scammed by AI-generated videos or audio clips? Did you spot AI-generated nudes of yourself on the internet?

Decode is trying to document cases of abuse of AI, and would like to hear from you. If you are willing to share your experience, do reach out to us at [email protected]. Your privacy is important to us, and we shall preserve your anonymity.

About Decode and Deepfake Watch

Deepfake Watch is an initiative by Decode, dedicated to keeping you abreast of the latest developments in AI and its potential for misuse. Our goal is to foster an informed community capable of challenging digital deceptions and advocating for a transparent digital environment.

We invite you to join the conversation, share your experiences, and contribute to the collective effort to maintain the integrity of our digital landscape. Together, we can build a future where technology amplifies truth, not obscures it.

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