When ChatGPT burst onto the scene, one of the predictions that people made about its overall impact was that the internet would soon be flooded by AI generated content as well as spam. It turns out that this prediction has come true, and there are three recent events that highlight what’s currently going on with all things having been considered and taken into account.
First and foremost is the incident involving 404 Media which had to take steps to retool its website for the purposes of preventing AI related spam. Some of its stories have been rewritten by websites that are better search engine optimized, and as a result of the fact that this is the case, they rank even higher than the website that actually created the content in the first place.
Such a trend can be harmful because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up taking revenue and clicks away from a site like 404 Media. There are now tools that can create hundreds of different variations of a specific type of article, and that is making it harder for legitimate sites to turn a profit than might have been the case otherwise.
Another incident that occurred involved the Hairpin, an indie blog that was started in the 2010s but which is now run by an AI click farmer. As if that wasn't enough, this click farmer has gone so far as to keep many of the original articles but replace the names of the women that wrote them with the names of men.
Perhaps the most concerning aspect of this AI influx of all has to do with AI generated obituaries. By scraping data from websites belonging to funeral homes, malicious artists are able to create entire YouTube videos that can get views from people looking for information about anyone that has passed in recent years.
Needless to say, this trend of obituary piracy has caused a lot of grief to bereaved families, and it’s just one of the many examples of how AI is being used for sinister purposes at this current point in time.
Photo: Digital Information World - AIgen
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First and foremost is the incident involving 404 Media which had to take steps to retool its website for the purposes of preventing AI related spam. Some of its stories have been rewritten by websites that are better search engine optimized, and as a result of the fact that this is the case, they rank even higher than the website that actually created the content in the first place.
Such a trend can be harmful because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up taking revenue and clicks away from a site like 404 Media. There are now tools that can create hundreds of different variations of a specific type of article, and that is making it harder for legitimate sites to turn a profit than might have been the case otherwise.
Another incident that occurred involved the Hairpin, an indie blog that was started in the 2010s but which is now run by an AI click farmer. As if that wasn't enough, this click farmer has gone so far as to keep many of the original articles but replace the names of the women that wrote them with the names of men.
Perhaps the most concerning aspect of this AI influx of all has to do with AI generated obituaries. By scraping data from websites belonging to funeral homes, malicious artists are able to create entire YouTube videos that can get views from people looking for information about anyone that has passed in recent years.
Needless to say, this trend of obituary piracy has caused a lot of grief to bereaved families, and it’s just one of the many examples of how AI is being used for sinister purposes at this current point in time.
Read next: Data Highlights Substantial Decrease in Ransom Payments, with Only 29% Complying in Q4 2023
