AI information laundering turns out to work
more directly than I thought.
Sam’s investigation into the inclusion of child sexual abuse material in the LAION large language model, a hugely important and sensitive story that we ultimately worked on over the course of nearly a year before we even launched, consulted with a lawyer on, and spoke to many experts for, quickly became an article called “They Delete A Database To Train AI Generative Images To Contain Child Sexual Abuse Material” on a website called “Nation World News.” Jason's scoop about a Russian stowaway became “LAX Passenger Arrives on International Flight Without Passport, Visa, Ticket, Report Says” on the Clayton County Register, another site full of AI cloned articles. Emanuel’s lighthearted interview with John Hittler became “The Man With the ‘worst Last Name In Human History’ Reveals How He Discovered Its Benefits” on “Nation World News” and, separately, “How The Man With the Worst Last Name in Human History Discovered Its Advantages” on “World Nation News,” a totally different website.
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Over the last few weeks Jason has been researching and experimenting with a series of AI tools that promise to “spin” articles for their users. One, called SpinRewriter, lets users create 1,000 slightly different versions of the same article with a single click and to automatically publish them to as many WordPress sites as you want using a paid plugin. It also offers a tool that lets users manage as many websites as they want from a single dashboard. A company called Byword gleefully advertises the “SEO heist” that “stole 3.6M total traffic from a competitor” with this One Weird Trick (exporting the competitor’s sitemap and creating AI generated versions of 1,800 of their articles).
The article goes on to say email is the only safe way to send content. Grim.