Renowned publications including Wired and Business Insider have been caught publishing what appears to be AI slop.
As Press Gazette reports in a fascinating investigation, numerous outlets have removed features published under the byline of “Margaux Blanchard” after suspicion emerged that the stories were fictionalized and AI-generated.
After Press Gazette reached out to the non-profit Index on Censorship over an article by the same author, for instance, the publisher concluded that the piece “appears to have been written by AI.”
It’s an especially galling situation for Wired, a publication that routinely features excellent coverage about how generative AI is slowly drowning the internet in uninspired slop, often undermining human creativity in the process.
It’s unclear how much money the person behind the ruse got away with, but considering that Wired sometimes pays thousands of dollars for in-depth, long-form reporting, it could be a considerable sum.
One thing’s for sure: the incident is very much a sign of the times. As AI tech progresses, chatbots are becoming incredibly adept at generating believable-sounding copy. In this case, human editors at reputable publications appear to have fallen victim to a scammer.
We’ve already come across many examples of publications falling for similar traps, and even media conglomerates accelerating the trend by pumping AI slop into newspapers firsthand.
Unsurprisingly, both Business Insider and Wired moved swiftly by deleting the offending content from their websites.
“The essay ‘Remote work has been the best thing for me as a parent but the worst as a person’ was removed because it didn’t meet Business Insider‘s standards,” reads an August 19 editor’s note where the article used to be.
And an editor’s note where Wired had previously published “They Fell in Love Playing Minecraft. Then the Game Became Their Wedding Venue” cautions that the story was taken down as it “does not meet our editorial standards.”
In many ways, the title of the piece perfectly meshes with Wired‘s usual coverage, making it a suitable pitch for the tech publication — a quirky and otherwise harmless love story taking place inside a digital world.
A quick perusal of an archived version of the since-deleted article reveals a tidily written piece about two individuals falling in love while playing the iconic video game. However, a closer look reveals several telltale signs of the piece having been generated by an AI, including already familiar sentence structures.
The piece also references a 34-year-old ordained officiant in Chicago who doesn’t appear to exist.
The story continued to spread online. Wired‘s piece was aggregated by several other publications, including Mashable, whose associate editor, Tim Marcin, characterized it as a “charming feature” in a commentary piece that has since been replaced by a similar editor’s note.
Meanwhile, Business Insider published two personal essays under the same byline, just two days apart. One of…
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