It was inevitable that someone would try to use AI like this to make certain jobs obsolete. Sites with content like this will manipulate Google's already garbage algorithms to make it a self-consuming snake.
The only way out is to continue to encourage thoughtful discussions from thoughtful articles. AI could certainly help with information, but perspective and insight is an inherently human trait that will tune people out.
Content farms have been polluting the web for years, to the point that search engines are near totally unreliable. But this new wave of AI-powered content farms, and even worse, AI-driven content from once respected and trustworthy orgs, is going to make things exponentially worse
Agree 💯 What's wild is that it's been taught that you have to use 'established' publications for reliable and accurate information. AI (in)famously can just make things up, and it's going to be at major sites
Destructoid was so good for so long. Between this and the fact that they started to bug me about my ad blocker, it's time for me to stop giving them views.
Really sad to see them fall so far. I remember back when they seemed like a beacon of light and hope of good communities and journalists etc. now to see them turn into just a spam garbage site is so sad.
... until someone will use an AI to generate a whole publication... or a whole set of them... or an entire publisher... or an entire holding owning the publisher...
I've just seen Black Mirror S06E01 yesterday night and it did hit deep
I'm just waiting until these models get completely unraveled by training on output. The more people use generative AI to make stuff online, the more useless the internet is as a data source.
Yo, I don't mean to get all John Connor or anything, but we need to put a stop to and legislate against AI. Full stop.
We already see how it's being misused.
What would you legislate here? The publication clearly doesn't care about quality and paying some people to fill shitty, already pre programmed templates and using something like chatGPT seems like the same style of crap.
They were definitely not a safe source of labor.
Also, I'd caution against reactive takes of "legislation" when the politicians who can legislate usually don't understand the technologies and are simply trying to bundle stuff in for their lobbyist (who funds them) benefit. The same types who "want to ban encryption" or other myopic takes.
Stronger rights and guarantees around imbalances of power (not specifically related to tech either) would work much better than just reacting to an AI scare.
The enshitification of the internet continues. How can we offer our content, but without having to pay anyone for it and at a much higher rate of delivery? By not giving a fuck about the quality anymore and not having any real competition so people have no choice. Except people always have a choice. We can walk away.
I don't see why people would even go to a site to read AI generated articles and be bombarded with ads. I could just ask an AI to write an article for me? Just cut out the middle man at that point.
I don’t see why people would even go to a site to read AI generated articles and be bombarded with ads.
Doesn't have to be voluntary on the user's part. Maybe they clicked a link on Google? Or maybe a site they've been reading for ages suddenly switches to "AI editors" and it's never really announced to the users in a clear way
The sites don't mention the AI authorship, so you go there to read an article, likely one you found linked elsewhere, only to be baffled by the ramblings.
I'm least worried about The Escapist, as the editor-in-chief for the past few years Nick Caldera is running it with integrity. It is the only game news site I am happy to pay a subscription to.
How does that matter if the owners just fired all the writers and replaced them with an AI? I see little to no integrity at a publication owned by some big group calling shots like this. These are Nick's bosses, so uhhh... he either listens or quits.
Yeah if they run it that brutally, it's going to go bad.
But usually there is a lot of difference between how sub-companies are treated both based on how they are currently doing and how strong-headed their management is.
Will it eventually be AIs at the marketing firm telling the execs that their ads are successful because the AIs on the other side are 'reading' it for new training data on how to better optimize viewer attention span? Just two Ad companies paying each other back and forth?
We as humans are already sensationalizing content for clicks. I can’t imagine what content is going to look like even in the near future with AI at the reigns.
The solution is the same as with the current shitty clickbait of today, ignore it.
If they automate shovelling useless crap (which they've already done quite a bit without the likes of chatgpt) then it's on the user to say "I'm not just gonna consume your crap, I'll go elsewhere with my views, which are your success metric, in aggregate"
They just want to capture the person coming in off of a search platform looking for something in a game. It's all about the clicks.
I was curious about some stuff in Elden Ring, and every search I did had shitty, obviously SE optimized bullshit for at least the first 10-15 results. Well fuck that, I'll just read the also bullshit SE optimized wiki because I can at least keep the adblockers on and the scripts off and wade through the crap.
This may be a little tangential, but does anyone know of any game news sites with RSS feeds that have talented writers working for them? Some of the sites I've followed for years have been regurgitating Twitter opinions more and more, and it makes finding thoughtful (or just plain informative) articles far more difficult.
More help from companies on letting me know the websites to stay away from. This isn't the first time DToid did stupid crap. Back on Justin.tv, maybe they had converted to Twitch already, they had a BUNCH of streamers that were ruling the platform, then they said that their streamers would have to review and give positive reviews of sponsored games. All the streamers left the group and Dtoid lost a TON of traction and Twitch exploded from Justin.TV.
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