A few weeks ago, I had dinner with some friends. One of them pulled out his phone and asked me if I thought I had written more than 200 pieces or so at this stage of my career. “Probably,” I said. “Why?”
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“You know, the way things are going, artificial intelligence is going to be able to write articles and books just by analyzing your writing style.” I was initially incredulous, maybe a bit dismissive. Then my friend went to a program on his phone and put in a query, asking it to write a 1,000-word Christmas story in the style of Charles Dickens. To my amazement, the program started churning out paragraphs within seconds — and not just a jumble of random words. The grafs had sentence variation, color, plot development.
He did another query: Think of a title for a children’s holiday book aimed at a Black audience. Within seconds, a list populated — and the winner was something to the effect of “Zahra’s Big Holiday Surprise.” I was stunned.
I thought of that convo as the news came down this week that the popular electronics site CNET has been using AI to write full articles. Frank Landymore at the Byte documents how eagle-eyed marketer Gael Breton figured out that CNET had quietly published more than 70 articles using AI since November, under the author name “CNET Money Staff.” Clicking on the author’s note reveals the truth:
“This article was assisted by an AI engine and reviewed, fact-checked and edited by our editorial staff.”
On top of that, it appears these AI-generated articles have benefited from Google traffic, despite the fact that Google has said it will prioritize human-generated content. Landymore wrote that a Google spokesman had clarified, “Our ranking team focuses on the usefulness of content, rather than how the content is produced.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/13/ai-writers-performance-enhancing-steroid/