For years, ESPN has put machine generated predictions of upcoming games.<p><a href="https://www.espn.com/nba/preview/_/gameId/401584885" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.espn.com/nba/preview/_/gameId/401584885</a><p>"The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar."<p>Example paragraph:<p>"The two teams match up for the second time this season. The Nuggets defeated the Clippers 111-108 in their last meeting on Nov. 15. Jokic led the Nuggets with 32 points, and Paul George led the Clippers with 35 points."<p>100% generated from the stats table, and totally boring and devoid of life. Horrible.
Will the Swimsuit Edition be generated with Stable Diffusion?<p>It certainly could be. Go here.[1] Use prompt "Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition cover." Under "Advanced", select model "ICantBelieveItsNotPhotography". Click Generate.<p>[1] <a href="https://stable-diffusion.site/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://stable-diffusion.site/</a>
I know some folks who are doing this in the food blogging space, see <a href="https://tastytango.blog/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://tastytango.blog/</a><p>It's hard to pin down exactly what I find so unsettling about the practice – it's almost like the uncanny valley, but for written content that apes human expression instead of imagery?
The doomsday clock for the fun parts of the internet is reaching midnight. This is what generative AI will be unleashing in droves as the software becomes more mature and eliminates the giveaway sentences and phrasing.
The real 'winners' here in the upcoming AI wave will be people with existing platforms. They'll replace staff and pocket the difference. This one was obvious but it soon won't be.
> "After we reached out with questions to the magazine's publisher, The Arena Group, all the AI-generated authors disappeared from Sports Illustrated's site without explanation. Our questions received no response."<p>What is The Arena Group? (<a href="https://thearenagroup.net/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://thearenagroup.net/</a>). It's a publicly traded company for one. (Stock price: AREN (NYSEAMERICAN) $2.76 -0.03 (-1.08%))<p>> "The Arena Group is an innovative technology platform and media company with a proven cutting-edge playbook that transforms media brands. We aggregate content across a diverse portfolio of over 265 brands, reaching over 100 million users monthly."<p>- "Our Brands": <a href="https://thearenagroup.net/our-brands/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://thearenagroup.net/our-brands/</a><p>So, basically, an entity that has people's eyeballs, content doesn't matter that much does it? But brand does (SI has notoriety for millions of people). I'm guessing ads are the main business here, therefore content generation in all ways that get people's attention is the goal (for cheap).
> The only problem? Outside of Sports Illustrated, Drew Ortiz doesn't seem to exist. He has no social media presence and no publishing history.<p>Looks like they're still working out the kinks. I look forward to the internet three years from now, where AI-generated authors have matching LinkedIn profiles and active social media accounts.
This battle will not be won by anyone other than the people using these tools to their advantage to pump and dump.<p>The genie is long out of the box now. Future iterations of LLMs will not get worse but better. And already now, something like GPT-4 easily bypasses human detection if the output is inherently controlled by a human.<p>Bad AI content can be detected super easily. ChatGPT is limited by its system prompts and it will always take the “least effort” way to answering your question, be it a question or an instruction to write an article. Repetition is a massive issue with 3.5 and Google can scout that out blindfolded.<p>If you want to mess with your own reputation then by all means use AI. The average internet user will not be any wiser about it. I would be very surprised if Google took action against these types of campaigns based on user feedback as opposed to an implementation in their own algorithms.
How do I know this writer is real?!<p>SI has fell off the cliff awhile back, I guess this is just trying to squeeze what you can from the name for as cheap as possible?
> After we reached out with questions to the magazine's publisher, The Arena Group, all the AI-generated authors disappeared from Sports Illustrated's site without explanation. Our questions received no response.<p>Probably better to just admit to it to avoid the usual Streisand effect.
How deep does the rot go in all of this?<p>Has it started happening at newspapers of record yet?<p><a href="https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_of_record" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_of_record</a>
Every time an SI article finds me its happens to be by a confirmed human, however its tends to be the biggest fluff piece as if almost dictated by the persons agent.<p>Oh well, we were always a Sport Magazine household anyways, better writing.
I personally don't mind if they use AI to augment human writing/introduce interesting personas instead of the formulaic intro-bulleted list-conclusion articles from ChatGPT
I ran the supposedly AI-generated text through an AI detector, it's not hard to do.<p>0% probability it was AI-generated.<p>Bad human writing exists too.
Just a reminder that Ronald Reagan got his start making up baseball games: he'd read the ticker with the bare bones of what was up (Joe X at bat strike ball ball foul Joe X on 1st Bob Y at bat) and then dramatically pretend to be at the game for the benefit of the listeners: "Joe X strides to the plate, swinging his bat. He swings...strike! The pitcher, impassive, looks at the ball...and like lightning throws another pitch, but the ref calls it wide."<p>Doing it mechanically doesn't seem any worse.
We need an aggregator that filters out such “news” agencies. Content written by ai? Garbage. Equally we need means to protect genuine content - perhaps text DRM.