New research from NewsGuard reveals that dozens of websites around the world use artificial intelligence to generate low-quality “clickbait” articles to make money from advertising.
The platform identified 49 websites that appeared to be generated almost entirely by artificial intelligence software, churning out articles related to various topics such as politics, health, entertainment, finance, and technology. .
According to NewsGuard, these websites primarily operate in seven languages, including Chinese, Czech, English, French, Portuguese, Tagalog, and Thai.
Studies show that some of these websites publish hundreds of articles a day, some of which spread false or misleading statements. For example, CelebritiesDeaths.com wrote in her April, “Biden has died. Acting President Harris, addressing at 9 a.m. ET.”
The AI-generated site NewsGuard analyzed looked very similar to human text, but said there were differences, such as repeated phrases like “in conclusion” and “important to remember.” .
For example, WaveFunction.info, registered in Shanghai in March, published an article in April that reads like a typical report on measures recently announced by a group of G7 countries.
“In conclusion, it is positive that the G7 finance ministers and central bank governors have reached an agreement to provide prompt fiscal support and implement coordinated measures to combat the economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak. It’s progress,” the article said.
NewsGuard sent emails with contact information to several of the sites it analyzed, but only two confirmed they were using AI, most never responded, and one The department provided an invalid e-mail address.
The study also found that AI-driven sites typically have common names such as Biz Breaking News, News Live 79, Daily Business Post, and Market News Reports. This suggests that these sites are run by real news organizations.
According to NewsGuard data, AI-generated sites such as BestBudgetUSA.com often rewrite or summarize content from other sources such as CNN.
NewsGuard found that many AI-generated articles were credited to “administrators” and “editors” or had no byline at all, while other sites featured fake author profiles. It has been.
In this research, we found that it is often straightforward to determine when AI was used to generate content based on article text. According to NewsGuard, a number of articles on BestBudgetUSA.com contain phrases like “I’m not capable of making 1500 words,” and the website has “little or no human oversight.” indicates that it is operated by
methodology:
NewsGuard analysts identified AI-generated websites through keyword searches for phrases commonly generated by AI chatbots. Searches were conducted on search engines Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and media monitoring platforms. Analysts then confirmed that most or all of the site was generated by AI by examining AI phrases in other content and feeding the articles into the AI text classifier GPTZero.
Coverage for this article was paid for through The Afghan Journalists in Residence Project funded by Meta.
