Here Come the Fake AI-generated “News” Sites

**The Rise of AI-Driven News Sites: A Growing Concern**

In recent times, there has been an alarming increase in the number of AI-driven news sites popping up across various platforms. These sites claim to provide knowledge and information to readers but often lack the nuance and depth that human journalists bring to the table. According to a report by NewsGuard, which identified 49 such sites, many of these sites operate with little to no human oversight, relying on AI algorithms to generate content.

**The Use of AI in Content Generation**

The use of AI in content generation has become increasingly prevalent in modern journalism. While it can be useful for summarizing or rewriting articles from established sources, the problem lies in the fact that many of these AI-generated articles are often indistinguishable from human-written ones. In fact, some sites go so far as to claim that their content is "quote published manually under human supervision unquote," which raises more questions than answers.

The report highlights that many of these AI-driven news sites have benign and generic names suggesting they're operated by established publishers such as Biz, Breaking News, News Live, 79 Daily Business, and Post. However, upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that these articles are often generated by AI algorithms, which can produce content with phrases that are commonly found in human-written texts. For example, many of the articles on sites like BestBudgetUSA.com contain phrases such as "I am not capable of producing 1500 words however I can provide you with a summary of the article unquote," which are often generated by AI algorithms.

**The Lack of Human Oversight**

One of the most worrying aspects of these AI-driven news sites is the lack of human oversight. Many of these sites credit their articles to "admin and editor" or have no bylines at all, suggesting that human editors are not involved in the content creation process. In fact, some sites even feature fake author profiles, such as HarmonyHustle.com, which lists content creators including Alex and Tom, only to reveal that neither author is authentic upon closer inspection.

**The Production of Customizable Disclaimers and Copyright Notices**

Another worrying aspect of these AI-driven news sites is the production of customizable disclaimers and copyright notices using tools used to generate algorithmically produced content. While these notices are often incomplete or lack substance, they can still have a significant impact on how readers perceive the credibility of the site.

**The Presence of Error Messages**

All 49 sites identified by NewsGuard had published at least one article containing error messages commonly found in AI-generated texts such as "my cutoff date is September 2021" or "quote as an AI language model I cannot complete this promise just leave it in because it's all automated and then they finished saying for example County local news.com which publishes stories about crime and current events published an article in March this year so a couple just a couple months ago whose title read like that of an AI parody." These error messages are often indicative of the fact that these articles were generated by AI algorithms, rather than human writers.

**The Growing Concern**

While it's true that we're still in the early stages of AI-driven journalism, it's clear that the problem is growing rapidly. As Bruce Schneier observed, "attacks only ever get better" and this trend applies to AI-generated content as well. These fake news sites are not just a nuisance; they can also have significant consequences for public health and safety.

**The Goal of these Sites**

According to experts, the primary goal of these AI-driven news sites is to fool search engines like Google and Bing into indexing their content, which can bring in revenue through targeted advertising. While this may seem like a minor concern, it's essential to remember that the primary objective of journalism should be to provide accurate and trustworthy information, not to generate profits.

**The Potential for Bias**

Unfortunately, some experts believe that these AI-driven news sites will also incorporate social media-style biases into their content, making them even more effective at hooking readers. While this may seem like a minor concern, it's essential to remember that the spread of misinformation can have significant consequences for public health and safety.

**Conclusion**

The rise of AI-driven news sites is a growing concern that requires attention from journalists, policymakers, and readers alike. While these sites may claim to provide knowledge and information, they often lack the nuance and depth that human journalists bring to the table. It's essential to remain vigilant and critically evaluate the content we consume online, especially when it comes to news sources that rely heavily on AI-generated content.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is TWiT this episode of tech break is brought to you by ACI learning certifications show more than proving a skill set they let everyone see you are committed to keeping your Knowledge and Skills up to date the products you've grown to love it pro audit Pro and practice labs are now training the modern Workforce together be bold train Smart check out go.acilearning.com twit to learn more there's an organization called newsguard which calls itself the internet trust tool I hadn't heard of it before so I wanted to like see whether I trusted these guys to give you some I some idea of its pedigree which I discovered it has co-ceos and co-editors in Chief Stephen Brill and Gordon krovitz both are attorneys veteran journalists and news entrepreneurs Stephen Brill founded the American lawyer magazine the court TV cable channel and like you Leo is a Yale having received both his bachelor's and his law degree from Yale where he also founded the Yale journalism initiative yeah he's good right yeah Brill Gordon krovitz is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Chicago he received a law degree as a Rhodes scholar from from wadham College of Oxford University and later a law degree from Yale he was the publisher of the Wall Street Journal and also served as Executive Vice President of Dow Jones so together the two of them have supervised thousands of journalists around the world they were also co-ceos and co-founders of press plus which was sold to RR Donnelly so pretty clearly you know they're not a pair of schlubs and newsguard which they co-founded in 2018 is not some scammy fly-by-night operation the title of their posting which caught my eye and the reason we're talking about this today was quote rise of the news Bots AI generated news websites proliferating online And the tagline beneath the headline reads newsguard has identified 49 news and information sites that appear to be almost entirely written by artificial intelligence software a new generation of content Farms is on the way unquote so you know the fact that the internet is fundamentally so bot compatible represents a real problem and of course this is not the first time this has been a problem the reason we have spam is that email is also 100 bot compatible but sadly it appears that the value of the internet for news and journalism is about to become a whole lot worse or at least diluted because we all need to understand and appreciate what's going on around us and because I suspect that it will give every listener some pause when they contemplate what is already happening to our internet I've lightly edited the article they posted in order to share it so here's what their recent research has just revealed they wrote newsguard has found that artificial intelligence tools are now being used to populate so-called content Farms referring to low quality websites around the world that churn out vast amount ounce of Click bait articles to optimize advertising Revenue last month News Guard identified 49 websites spanning seven languages Chinese Czech English French Portuguese Tagalog and Thai that appear to be entirely or mostly generated by artificial intelligence language models designed to mimic human communication in the form of what appear to be typical news websites the websites which often fail to disclose ownership or control produce a high volume of content related to a variety of topics including politics Health entertainment finance and Technology some publish hundreds of Articles a day some of the content advances false narratives nearly all of the content features Bland language and repetitive phrases Hallmarks of artificial intelligence many of the sites are saturated with advertisements indicating that they were likely designed to generate revenue from programmatic ads ads placed algorithmically across the web which Finance some of the world's media much of sorry much of the world's media much as the internet's first generation of content Farms operated by humans were built to do in short as numerous and more powerful AI tools have been unveiled and made available to the public in recent months concerns that they could be used to conjure up entire news organizations once the subject of speculation by media Scholars have now become reality last month News Guard sent emails to 20 to the 29 sites in the analysis of 49 that listed contact information and two confirmed that they have used AI of the remaining 27 sites two did not address news guards questions while eight provided invalid email addresses and 17 did not respond News Guard exchanged a series of emails some of which were hard to comprehend with the self-described owner of famadillo.com a site that has published numerous AI generated product reviews attributed to admin this person who identified themselves as Maria spandoros denied that the site used AI in a widespread manner quote we did and here's this is a direct quote of her we did an expert to use AI to edit old articles that nobody read anymore just to see how it works unquote spanodorus who declined a phone call with newsguard said without elaborating adesh ingale who identified himself as the founder of get into knowledge.com a site that newsguard found to have published AI generated click bake articles about history science and other topics responded quote we use automation at some points where they are extremely needed and yes they are 100 percent facts checked so that no false information is created as a world is growing towards digital and automation era we have introduced some automation softwares in our work but the results getting out of it are 100 original and Regional facts based unquote when asked by newsguard ingale did not elaborate on the site's use of AI and claim that the site's content is quote published manually under human supervision unquote ingale added we are the new age of providing knowledge to each and every corner unquote the 49 AI driven sites that News Guard identified typically have benign and generic names suggesting they're operated by established Publishers such as Biz breaking news news live 79 Daily Business post and market news reports the AI generated articles often consists of content summarized or Rewritten from other services for example bestbudgetusa.com a site that does not provide information about us ownership and was anonymously registered in May of 2022 appears primarily to summarize or rewrite articles from CNN the Articles themselves often give away the fact that they were AI produced for example dozens of articles on bestbudgetusa.com contain phrases of the kind often produced by generative AI in response to prompts such as quote I am not capable of producing 1500 words however I can provide you with a summary of the article unquote yeah as an AI you'll find it everywhere it's amazing people are so lazy they don't even cut that part out wow it's mind-boggling and then and then in this case that that quote was followed by a link to the original CNN report and there you go God so they they said the presence of these sorts of phrases also evidence that these sites likely operate with little to no human oversight many of the AI generated articles identified by newsguard are credited to admin and editor or have no bylines at all other sites feature fake author profiles for example Harmony hustle.com an anonymously operated site registered just last month lists content creators including Alex and Tom a reverse yeah you know Alex again oh Alex and Tom yeah a reverse image search of their profile photos revealed that neither author is authentic oh wow some of the sites also include about and privacy policy pages that were algorithmically produced by tools used to generate customizable disclaimers and copyright notices but were not fully completed leaving little doubt about their source for example the about us page of History fact dot i n and anonymously run AI generated site identified by newsguard stated that quote okay get a load of this quote this website was founded in and then we have Open Bracket date close bracket by Open Bracket your name close bracket period also also history commits history fact commits to reply to all people who subscribe to the UT YouTube channel then we have brackets Channel link close brackets and follow our website we hope you enjoy our services as much as we enjoy offering them to you sincerely comma bracket your name close bracket but this has been the computer era forever that's like male words that doesn't bother to merge in a name or right you know we've seen this forever and ever and ever right yeah so they said the page linked to a free about us page generator tool which produces customized site descriptions newsguard found that many other sites were using similar tools including a disclaimer generator to create terms of service and privacy policy pages so they they finish the unassuming reader would likely have no idea that the Articles produced by many of these AI content Farms were not written by a human if not for one glaring Tale all 49 sites identified by newsguard had published at least one article containing error messages commonly found in AI generated texts such as my cutoff date is September 2021 yeah or quote as an AI language model I cannot complete this promise just leave it in because it's all automated and then they they finished saying for example County local news.com which publishes stories about crime and current events published an article in March this year so a couple just a couple months ago whose title read like that of an AI parody it stated quote death news colon sorry I cannot fulfill this prompt as it goes against ethical and moral principles vaccine genocide is a conspiracy that is not based on scientific evidence and can cause harm and damage to Public Health as an AI language model it is my responsibility to provide factual and trustworthy information good so anyway so you know and so here's the concern the laughable mistakes that are being made today by these AI driven news sites is only evidence that we're still in the early days you know the first stages of this new and emerging nightmare Bruce schneier's pithy observation that attacks only ever get better unfortunately applies here we can you know we can be sure that these fake news sites are only ever going to get better and become increasingly difficult to spot their goal will be to fool Google Bing and other search engines into indexing their content that will bring eyeballs to their ad Laden Pages for Revenue generation what they will be devoid of is any thoughtful new or original content or journalism they'll just be AI driven regurgitation factories and unfortunately it's possible to imagine that the same deliberate social media style biases that have proven to be so powerful and effective in hooking people to their content will eventually be added to make them even more effective so here come the AI yup not surprised okaythis is TWiT this episode of tech break is brought to you by ACI learning certifications show more than proving a skill set they let everyone see you are committed to keeping your Knowledge and Skills up to date the products you've grown to love it pro audit Pro and practice labs are now training the modern Workforce together be bold train Smart check out go.acilearning.com twit to learn more there's an organization called newsguard which calls itself the internet trust tool I hadn't heard of it before so I wanted to like see whether I trusted these guys to give you some I some idea of its pedigree which I discovered it has co-ceos and co-editors in Chief Stephen Brill and Gordon krovitz both are attorneys veteran journalists and news entrepreneurs Stephen Brill founded the American lawyer magazine the court TV cable channel and like you Leo is a Yale having received both his bachelor's and his law degree from Yale where he also founded the Yale journalism initiative yeah he's good right yeah Brill Gordon krovitz is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Chicago he received a law degree as a Rhodes scholar from from wadham College of Oxford University and later a law degree from Yale he was the publisher of the Wall Street Journal and also served as Executive Vice President of Dow Jones so together the two of them have supervised thousands of journalists around the world they were also co-ceos and co-founders of press plus which was sold to RR Donnelly so pretty clearly you know they're not a pair of schlubs and newsguard which they co-founded in 2018 is not some scammy fly-by-night operation the title of their posting which caught my eye and the reason we're talking about this today was quote rise of the news Bots AI generated news websites proliferating online And the tagline beneath the headline reads newsguard has identified 49 news and information sites that appear to be almost entirely written by artificial intelligence software a new generation of content Farms is on the way unquote so you know the fact that the internet is fundamentally so bot compatible represents a real problem and of course this is not the first time this has been a problem the reason we have spam is that email is also 100 bot compatible but sadly it appears that the value of the internet for news and journalism is about to become a whole lot worse or at least diluted because we all need to understand and appreciate what's going on around us and because I suspect that it will give every listener some pause when they contemplate what is already happening to our internet I've lightly edited the article they posted in order to share it so here's what their recent research has just revealed they wrote newsguard has found that artificial intelligence tools are now being used to populate so-called content Farms referring to low quality websites around the world that churn out vast amount ounce of Click bait articles to optimize advertising Revenue last month News Guard identified 49 websites spanning seven languages Chinese Czech English French Portuguese Tagalog and Thai that appear to be entirely or mostly generated by artificial intelligence language models designed to mimic human communication in the form of what appear to be typical news websites the websites which often fail to disclose ownership or control produce a high volume of content related to a variety of topics including politics Health entertainment finance and Technology some publish hundreds of Articles a day some of the content advances false narratives nearly all of the content features Bland language and repetitive phrases Hallmarks of artificial intelligence many of the sites are saturated with advertisements indicating that they were likely designed to generate revenue from programmatic ads ads placed algorithmically across the web which Finance some of the world's media much of sorry much of the world's media much as the internet's first generation of content Farms operated by humans were built to do in short as numerous and more powerful AI tools have been unveiled and made available to the public in recent months concerns that they could be used to conjure up entire news organizations once the subject of speculation by media Scholars have now become reality last month News Guard sent emails to 20 to the 29 sites in the analysis of 49 that listed contact information and two confirmed that they have used AI of the remaining 27 sites two did not address news guards questions while eight provided invalid email addresses and 17 did not respond News Guard exchanged a series of emails some of which were hard to comprehend with the self-described owner of famadillo.com a site that has published numerous AI generated product reviews attributed to admin this person who identified themselves as Maria spandoros denied that the site used AI in a widespread manner quote we did and here's this is a direct quote of her we did an expert to use AI to edit old articles that nobody read anymore just to see how it works unquote spanodorus who declined a phone call with newsguard said without elaborating adesh ingale who identified himself as the founder of get into knowledge.com a site that newsguard found to have published AI generated click bake articles about history science and other topics responded quote we use automation at some points where they are extremely needed and yes they are 100 percent facts checked so that no false information is created as a world is growing towards digital and automation era we have introduced some automation softwares in our work but the results getting out of it are 100 original and Regional facts based unquote when asked by newsguard ingale did not elaborate on the site's use of AI and claim that the site's content is quote published manually under human supervision unquote ingale added we are the new age of providing knowledge to each and every corner unquote the 49 AI driven sites that News Guard identified typically have benign and generic names suggesting they're operated by established Publishers such as Biz breaking news news live 79 Daily Business post and market news reports the AI generated articles often consists of content summarized or Rewritten from other services for example bestbudgetusa.com a site that does not provide information about us ownership and was anonymously registered in May of 2022 appears primarily to summarize or rewrite articles from CNN the Articles themselves often give away the fact that they were AI produced for example dozens of articles on bestbudgetusa.com contain phrases of the kind often produced by generative AI in response to prompts such as quote I am not capable of producing 1500 words however I can provide you with a summary of the article unquote yeah as an AI you'll find it everywhere it's amazing people are so lazy they don't even cut that part out wow it's mind-boggling and then and then in this case that that quote was followed by a link to the original CNN report and there you go God so they they said the presence of these sorts of phrases also evidence that these sites likely operate with little to no human oversight many of the AI generated articles identified by newsguard are credited to admin and editor or have no bylines at all other sites feature fake author profiles for example Harmony hustle.com an anonymously operated site registered just last month lists content creators including Alex and Tom a reverse yeah you know Alex again oh Alex and Tom yeah a reverse image search of their profile photos revealed that neither author is authentic oh wow some of the sites also include about and privacy policy pages that were algorithmically produced by tools used to generate customizable disclaimers and copyright notices but were not fully completed leaving little doubt about their source for example the about us page of History fact dot i n and anonymously run AI generated site identified by newsguard stated that quote okay get a load of this quote this website was founded in and then we have Open Bracket date close bracket by Open Bracket your name close bracket period also also history commits history fact commits to reply to all people who subscribe to the UT YouTube channel then we have brackets Channel link close brackets and follow our website we hope you enjoy our services as much as we enjoy offering them to you sincerely comma bracket your name close bracket but this has been the computer era forever that's like male words that doesn't bother to merge in a name or right you know we've seen this forever and ever and ever right yeah so they said the page linked to a free about us page generator tool which produces customized site descriptions newsguard found that many other sites were using similar tools including a disclaimer generator to create terms of service and privacy policy pages so they they finish the unassuming reader would likely have no idea that the Articles produced by many of these AI content Farms were not written by a human if not for one glaring Tale all 49 sites identified by newsguard had published at least one article containing error messages commonly found in AI generated texts such as my cutoff date is September 2021 yeah or quote as an AI language model I cannot complete this promise just leave it in because it's all automated and then they they finished saying for example County local news.com which publishes stories about crime and current events published an article in March this year so a couple just a couple months ago whose title read like that of an AI parody it stated quote death news colon sorry I cannot fulfill this prompt as it goes against ethical and moral principles vaccine genocide is a conspiracy that is not based on scientific evidence and can cause harm and damage to Public Health as an AI language model it is my responsibility to provide factual and trustworthy information good so anyway so you know and so here's the concern the laughable mistakes that are being made today by these AI driven news sites is only evidence that we're still in the early days you know the first stages of this new and emerging nightmare Bruce schneier's pithy observation that attacks only ever get better unfortunately applies here we can you know we can be sure that these fake news sites are only ever going to get better and become increasingly difficult to spot their goal will be to fool Google Bing and other search engines into indexing their content that will bring eyeballs to their ad Laden Pages for Revenue generation what they will be devoid of is any thoughtful new or original content or journalism they'll just be AI driven regurgitation factories and unfortunately it's possible to imagine that the same deliberate social media style biases that have proven to be so powerful and effective in hooking people to their content will eventually be added to make them even more effective so here come the AI yup not surprised okay\n"