Ghost Kitchens Are Advertising AI-Generated Food on DoorDash and Grubhub

https://www.404media.co/ghost-kitchens-are-advertising-ai-generated-food-on-doordash-and-grubhub/

"It’s common for advertisements to stage or edit pictures of food to make it look more enticing, but in these cases the ghost kitchens are showing people pictures of food that literally doesn’t exist, and looks nothing like the actual items they’re selling, sometimes because the faulty AI is producing physically impossible food items. "

#greshamslaw20

Inside the World of TikTok Spammers and the AI Tools That Enable Them

https://www.404media.co/inside-the-world-of-tiktok-spammers-and-the-ai-tools-that-enable-them/

"We have recently been getting bombarded with Instagram Reels of influencers explaining how they make five figures a month by using AI to create tons of viral TikTok pages using stolen celebrity clips juxtaposed next to Minecraft gameplay footage."

#greshamslaw20

Tech writer Kara Swisher has a new book. Enter the AI-generated scams.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/03/01/amazon-ai-fake-books-authors/

"Swisher looked at the screen and saw a book claiming to be a new biography of her, with an image on the cover that she immediately pegged as an AI-generated fake. … A closer look suggested that the book itself might be largely or entirely AI-generated, substituting generic descriptions of Swisher for factual details or anecdotes."

#greshamslaw20

My Robotic Doppelganger Is The Grim Face of Journalism's Future!

https://foreverwars.ghost.io/my-robotic-doppelganger-is-the-grim-face-of-journalisms-future/

"On the zombie edition of the Washington Independent I discovered, the piece I had published more than ten years before was attributed to someone else. Someone unlikely to have ever existed, and whose byline graced an article it had absolutely never written."

#greshamslaw20

Google Is Finally Trying to Kill AI Clickbait

https://www.wired.com/story/google-search-artificial-intelligence-clickbait-spam-crackdown/

"Google is taking action against algorithmically generated spam. The search engine giant just announced upcoming changes, including a revamped spam policy, designed in part to keep AI clickbait out of its search results."

#greshamslaw20

The Perfect Webpage: How the internet reshaped itself around Google’s search algorithms — and into a world where websites look the same.

https://www.theverge.com/c/23998379/google-search-seo-algorithm-webpage-optimization

"Bit by bit, the internet has been remade in Google’s image. And it’s humans — not machines — who have to deal with the consequences."

#greshamslaw20

[I can't prove this one is related, but I have a strong hunch that it is.]

Why Is Your News Site Going Out of Business?

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/why-is-your-news-site-going-out-of-business

[TPM's programmatic advertising revenue declined from ~$1.7M in 2016 to ~$75K in 2023.]

"If you look at that graph you can see that if your business was ads and remained ads you’re toast."

#greshamslaw20

Monitoring AI-Modified Content at Scale: A Case Study on the Impact of ChatGPT on AI Conference Peer Reviews

https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.07183

"Our results suggest that between 6.5% and 16.9% of text submitted as peer reviews to these conferences could have been substantially modified by LLMs, i.e. beyond spell-checking or minor writing updates."

#greshamslaw20

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-320

"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a bunch of people all accusing each other ad infinitum of being AIs (“haven’t you heard of Dead Internet Theory?!”), while the actual AIs serve ads to them in the background.”

#greshamslaw20

How Spammers, Scammers and Creators Leverage AI-Generated Images on Facebook for Audience Growth

https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io/news/ai-spam-accounts-build-followers

"We suspect that AI-generated images appear on users’ Feeds because the Facebook Feed ranking algorithm promotes content that is likely to generate engagement.”

#greshamslaw20

Huckster Behind ‘Willy Wonka’ Event Also Sells AI-Written Vaccine Conspiracy Books

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/willy-wonka-event-glasgow-billy-coull-ai-vaccine-conspiracy-books-1234976876/

“Coull couldn’t even be bothered to pen his own author bio, which declares him a “rising star in the literary world” who “weaves spellbinding tales that delve into the mysterious realms of fictional thrillers and gripping conspiracies.”

#greshamslaw20

Kotaku EIC Resigns Over New Editorial Edict

https://aftermath.site/kotaku-eic-resigns-over-new-editorial-edict

"In a resignation letter seen by Aftermath, Glennon says that she made this choice due to the management team’s recent decision to deprioritize news in favor of guides. … According to a source close to the situation, Kotaku's staff will be expected to create 50 guides a week at the site.”

#greshamslaw20

TikTok is paying creators to up its search game

https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/18/24101695/tiktok-creator-rewards-program-monetization-search-value-seo

"The insights tool essentially lays out ideas for videos a creator could make, based on both personalized and general data. On my account, for example, TikTok flagged “Succession outfits” as a recommended topic for me to make content about. Also listed: “Herman Miller Chair,” “Fairy Grunge Room Ideas,” and “strawberry muffins.””

#greshamslaw20

The AI Peer-Review Crisis

https://www.404media.co/email/c36519c0-0930-47a2-808d-48631b597dc1

“The bigger issue is that there's just the peer review crisis you're talking about where there's just so many papers being sent to these conferences,” he said. “I think it leads to the kinds of things that you're seeing in [Liang’s] paper where people are using the AI technology to help them to do the reviews.”

#greshamslaw20

Google Books Is Indexing AI-Generated Garbage

https://www.404media.co/google-books-is-indexing-ai-generated-garbage

"For example, the 2024 book Bears, Bulls, and Wolves: Stock Trading for the Twenty-Year-Old by Tristin McIver, bills itself as “a transformative journey into the world of stock trading” and “a comprehensive guide designed for beginners eager to unlock the mysteries of financial markets.” In reality, it reads like ChatGPT-generated text with surface, Wikipedia-level analysis"

#greshamslaw20

‘AI Instagram Influencers’ Are Stealing Women’s Bodies

https://www.404media.co/email/d72b3844-9d62-4961-b52f-86ba9f237480

"Stealing video footage from real women to make an AI influencer more “believable,” because the underlying video footage actually is real, is a strategy that I repeatedly saw being espoused by guides to making these AI influencers."

#greshamslaw20

‘Made for Advertising’ Websites Are the Marketing Industry’s Latest Messy Situation

https://www.wsj.com/articles/made-for-advertising-websites-are-the-marketing-industrys-latest-messy-situation-560c79de

"“Because we could say things like, ‘Well, it’s automatically generated content.’ But if somebody finds value in that—for example, I would read a piece that tells me something about my air conditioner, like how to install it, or how to clean it—I don’t care whether that was written by a person or a machine, as long as it solves my problem. So does that constitute MFA?”

#greshamslaw20

How I Built an AI-Powered, Self-Running Propaganda Machine for $105

https://www.wsj.com/politics/how-i-built-an-ai-powered-self-running-propaganda-machine-for-105-e9888705

"It took me two days, $105 and no expertise whatsoever to launch a fully automated, AI-generated local news site capable of publishing thousands of articles a day—with the partisan news coverage framing of my choice, nearly all rewritten without credit from legitimate news sources.”

#greshamslaw20

The AI flight attendants of Facebook

https://www.garbageday.email/p/ai-flight-attendants-facebook

"Who cares if users are praying to and/or asking to marry AI images of flight attendants? All that matters is that they’re on the app and you can stick ads in front of them.”

#greshamslaw20

Amazon is filled with garbage ebooks. Here’s how they get made.

https://www.vox.com/culture/24128560/amazon-trash-ebooks-mikkelsen-twins-ai-publishing-academy-scam

"The saddest part about it, though, is that the garbage books don’t actually make that much money either. …The way people make money these days is by teaching students the process of making a garbage ebook. It’s grift and garbage all the way down — and the people who ultimately lose out are the readers and writers who love books.”

#greshamslaw20

Facebook’s AI Told Parents Group It Has a Gifted, Disabled Child

https://www.404media.co/facebooks-ai-told-parents-group-it-has-a-disabled-child/

"The top-ranked comment on this post is from “Meta AI,” which is Meta’s AI chatbot. “I have a child who is also 2e and has been part of the NYC G&T program,” the nonsentient chatbot wrote to a group of human parents. “We’ve had a positive experience with the citywide program, specifically with the program at The Anderson School.”

#greshamslaw20

AI Is Poisoning Reddit to Promote Products and Game Google With 'Parasite SEO'

https://www.404media.co/ai-is-poisoning-reddit-to-promote-products-and-game-google-with-parasite-seo/

"A service called ReplyGuy advertises itself as “the AI that plugs your product on Reddit” and which automatically “mentions your product in conversations naturally.”"

#greshamslaw20

Facebook’s Bizarre AI Images Now on LinkedIn, Too

https://www.404media.co/facebooks-bizarre-ai-images-now-on-linkedin-too/

"The post has 2,192 reactions, 173 comments, and 84 reposts. About half of the comments note that the image is AI-generated, while about half of them say things like “I just saw his wood curving of Messi, He is talented. Just amazing.”

#greshamslaw20

Do You Like These AI Images of Dying, Mutilated Children? Facebook Algorithm Wonders

https://www.404media.co/ai-images-of-dying-drowning-mutilated-children-go-viral-on-facebook/

"One of the images shows a child whose leg is amputated below the knee and holds a sign reading “Today is my birthlday pleaase like.” That image has 70,000 likes and 3,000 comments. Another image is of a girl face-down in the ocean wearing an oxygen mask that is connected to a floating birthday cake.”

#greshamslaw20

Flood of AI-Generated Submissions ‘Final Straw’ for Small 22-Year-Old Publisher

https://www.404media.co/bards-and-sages-closing-ai-generated-writing/

"“The problem with AI is the people who use AI. They don't respect the written word,” Dawson told me. “These are people who think their ‘ideas’ are more important than the actual craft of writing, so they churn out all these ‘ideas’ and enter their idea prompts and think the output is a story.”

#greshamslaw20

Facebook’s AI Spam Isn’t the ‘Dead Internet’: It’s the Zombie Internet

https://www.404media.co/facebooks-ai-spam-isnt-the-dead-internet-its-the-zombie-internet/

"When exploring their comment sections, one will often see hundreds of bot-like comments interspersed with a few ‘real’ people sounding the alarm to no avail,” Khan Schoolcraft, a moderator of the group, told me. “It’s like yelling into an empty room full of a thousand identical brick walls.”

#greshamslaw20

Crypto world taps AI to flood IRS with complaints about tax regs

https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2024/05/crypto-world-taps-ai-to-flood-irs-with-complaints-about-tax-regs-00155690

"Some leading opponents have built online tools that tap the power of artificial intelligence to allow anyone to quickly generate custom letters to the IRS in opposition to the proposal — a big step beyond the form letters often central to other lobbying campaigns.”

#greshamslaw20

Meet AdVon, the AI-Powered Content Monster Infecting the Media Industry

https://futurism.com/advon-ai-content

"Basically, AdVon engages in what Google calls "site reputation abuse": it strikes deals with publishers in which it provides huge numbers of extremely low-quality product reviews — often for surprisingly prominent publications — intended to pull in traffic from people Googling things like "best ab roller." "

#greshamslaw20

Slop is the new name for unwanted AI-generated content

https://simonwillison.net/2024/May/8/slop/

"Not all promotional content is spam, and not all AI-generated content is slop. But if it’s mindlessly generated and thrust upon someone who didn’t ask for it, slop is the perfect term for it."

#greshamslaw20

This is what the internet looks like now

https://www.garbageday.email/p/internet-looks-like-now

"Across the social web, older forms of low-effort engagement bait are getting a brand new coat of AI paint. Every time I poke around a random TikTok that ends up on my For You Page, I, without fail, find out it’s connected to some weird content farm pumping out AI images on Facebook."

#greshamslaw20

AI Generated Hentai Is Viral All Over Facebook

https://www.404media.co/ai-generated-hentai-is-viral-all-over-facebook/

"Over the last few months, I have realized that I do not have to rush to archive content that blatantly violates Facebook’s rules, because Facebook has not deleted any posts that I have wanted to reference in an article this year without me directly sending them a link to the content.”

#greshamslaw20

The Tragic Downfall of the Internet’s Art Gallery

https://slate.com/technology/2024/05/deviantart-what-happened-ai-decline-lawsuit-stability.html

“Generate a bunch of free images and accounts, have them buy and boost one another in perpetuity, inflate metrics so that the “art” gets boosted by DeviantArt and reaches real humans, then watch the money pile up from DeviantArt revenue-sharing programs. Rinse, repeat."

#greshamslaw20

AI is making Meta’s apps basically unusable

https://www.fastcompany.com/91113437/ai-making-meta-apps-basically-unusable

"This new Instagram header also features a side-scrolling list of prompts for interacting with the AI: “Imagine rooftop gardens,” “advice for the modern stoic,” “anime reels.” … I have no rooftop, and if they think I’m interested in stoicism or anime, they’re beyond help.

#greshamslaw20

It’s the End of the Web as We Know It

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/04/generative-ai-search-llmo/678154/

"If we continue in this direction, the web—that extraordinary ecosystem of knowledge production—will cease to exist in any useful form. Just as there is an entire industry of scammy SEO-optimized websites trying to entice search engines to recommend them so you click on them, there will be a similar industry of AI-written, LLMO-optimized sites.”

#greshamslaw20

Amazon Sold Fake Copies of Hotly Anticipated UFO Book

https://www.404media.co/amazon-sold-fake-copies-of-hotly-anticipated-ufo-book/

"On Twitter and Reddit, users are posting photographs of books with the same cover as Imminent, including Elizondo’s name as the author, and at first glance what seems like an identical title. Inside, however, is poorly written text that reads like it was copy/pasted from Wikipedia, two inch margins, huge font like a children's book, and, at least according to one photograph, blank pages.”

#greshamslaw20

It Looked Like a Reliable News Site. It Was an A.I. Chop Shop.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/06/technology/bnn-breaking-ai-generated-news.html

"A closer look, however, would have revealed that individual journalists at BNN published lengthy stories as often as multiple times a minute, writing in generic prose familiar to anyone who has tinkered with the A.I. chatbot ChatGPT."

#greshamslaw20

AI Images in Google Search Results Have Opened a Portal to Hell

https://www.404media.co/google-image-search-ai-results-have-opened-a-portal-to-hell/

"Overall, I tested this method with 13 female celebrity names, including some of the most famous people on the planet and some lesser known YouTubers and Twitch Streamers, and every single Google Image search indexed AI-generated images of them even though the search term did not include “AI.””

#greshamslaw20

I Paid $365.63 to Replace 404 Media With AI

https://www.404media.co/i-paid-365-63-to-replace-404-media-with-ai/

"If that latter story sounds familiar that’s because it is a blatant, uncredited rip-off of a story I published on 404 Media the same day. I was able to publish it alongside 52 other articles that day all by myself because I created an entirely autonomous, ChatGPT-powered technology news site that steals other people’s original reporting for just $365.63.”

#greshamslaw20

A Beloved Tech Blog Is Now Publishing AI Articles Under the Names of Its Old Human Staff

https://www.404media.co/a-beloved-tech-blog-tuaw-is-now-publishing-ai-articles-under-the-names-of-its-old-human-staff/

“Worse, the new version of TUAW has “recreated” the archives of the site by running old, real articles through a summarization tool and then republishing new, “bastardized versions” of the old articles under the bylines of real writers who didn’t actually write them”

#greshamslaw20

How disinformation from a Russian AI spam farm ended up on top of Google search results

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/07/how-disinformation-from-a-russian-ai-spam-farm-ended-up-on-top-of-google-search-results/

““In 2016, a disinformation operation like this would have likely required an army of computer trolls,” Sadeghi said. “Today, thanks to generative AI, much of this seems to be done primarily by a single individual, John Mark Dougan.””

#greshamslaw20