from the beep-boop dept
Karl simply wrote about CNET, a once-vaunted useful resource for tech journalism, completely stepping on each rake it may discover through the use of AI-generated content material that was completely laughable: the content material tended to be inaccurate, plagiarized, or in any other case so stuffed with errors that a military of editors needed to rework the content material, largely wiping away any price financial savings the location hoped to realize. Good occasions throughout.
Now, whereas it’s tough to pin this down fully, it positive appears like Sports activities Illustrated goes down the identical path. On the identical time that Area Group, the mum or dad firm for SI and Males’s Journal, introduced that it was going to embrace AI-created content material, SI can also be laying off more wetware-based journalists.
“After seven and a half years of writing in regards to the NHL, NBA, NFL, MLB, LPGA, World Cup, Olympics and extra, I, too, have been laid off by Sports activities Illustrated this morning,” rejoined Alex Prewitt, a former senior author.
In accordance with an inner memo obtained by Awful Announcing, Area Group has laid off a large 17 workers and created 12 openings to “mirror the brand new wants of the SI enterprise.” (One thing tells us these “new wants” may contain accommodating the generative AI the mum or dad firm has been brandishing at Men’s Journal.)
The state of American journalism is nothing greater than an absolute travesty. The whole lack of worth media corporations and, to some extent the general public, have positioned in having actual, skilled, and human journalists is mindboggling. There’s much less native journalism now per capita than there was for an extended, very long time. And now nationwide journalism outfits are searching for to outsource journalism to SkyNET? C’mon.
And as soon as once more, the output of this AI journalism leaves a lot to be desired.
And on the accuracy entrance, Area Group’s AI-guided dreck isn’t doing any higher. Futurism, with the assistance of a medical professional, discovered that its very first AI article for Males’s Journal, titled “What All Males Ought to Know About Low Testosterone,” contained at least 18 factual errors, regardless of the authoritative tone of its synthesized prose. Not what you’d need out of one thing that’s speculated to be giving well being recommendation to the location’s huge readership.
In response, the article was unexpectedly and extensively rewritten to account for the inaccuracies. Some nonetheless slipped by way of the cracks.
That didn’t appear to hassle Area, although. A spokesperson from the group said in a press release offered to Futurism that the corporate was “assured within the articles.”
Positive, categorical confidence in your error-riddled word-salads you name journalism. Why not? It’s solely the fame you’ve gotten with readers, in any other case often called your complete purpose you’ve gotten a enterprise, that we’re speaking about right here.
To be clear, SI has not but used AI created content material, so far as it has admitted publicly. However these layoffs create a vacuum that must be crammed by somebody… or one thing. Given the route that Area Group goes with its different properties, that AI goes to be employed right here too is, at worst, an informed guess.
Filed Underneath: ai, journalism
Corporations: arena group, sports illustrated
