from the can-AI-be-used-to-create-a-fake-sport? dept.
They were asked about it, and they deleted everything:
There was nothing in Drew Ortiz's author biography at Sports Illustrated to suggest that he was anything other than human.
"Drew has spent much of his life outdoors, and is excited to guide you through his never-ending list of the best products to keep you from falling to the perils of nature," it read. "Nowadays, there is rarely a weekend that goes by where Drew isn't out camping, hiking, or just back on his parents' farm."
The only problem? Outside of Sports Illustrated, Drew Ortiz doesn't seem to exist. He has no social media presence and no publishing history. And even more strangely, his profile photo on Sports Illustrated is for sale on a website that sells AI-generated headshots, where he's described as "neutral white young-adult male with short brown hair and blue eyes."
Ortiz isn't the only AI-generated author published by Sports Illustrated, according to a person involved with the creation of the content who asked to be kept anonymous to protect them from professional repercussions.
"There's a lot," they told us of the fake authors. "I was like, what are they? This is ridiculous. This person does not exist."
[...] The AI content marks a staggering fall from grace for Sports Illustrated, which in past decades won numerous National Magazine Awards for its sports journalism and published work by literary giants ranging from William Faulkner to John Updike.
But now that it's under the management of The Arena Group, parts of the magazine seem to have devolved into a Potemkin Village in which phony writers are cooked up out of thin air, outfitted with equally bogus biographies and expertise to win readers' trust, and used to pump out AI-generated buying guides that are monetized by affiliate links to products that provide a financial kickback when readers click them.
What's next? Six-fingered AI-generated models for the swimsuit edition?
Related:
- The AI Hype Bubble is the New Crypto Hype Bubble
- OpenAI Has Released the Largest Version Yet of its Fake-News-Spewing AI
- Inside the Secret List of Websites That Make AI Like ChatGPT Sound Smart
Related Stories
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow2718
OpenAI has released the largest version yet of its fake-news-spewing AI
In February OpenAI catapulted itself into the public eye when it produced a language model so good at generating fake news that the organization decided not to release it. Some within the AI research community argued it was a smart precaution; others wrote it off as a publicity stunt. The lab itself, a small San Francisco-based for-profit that seeks to create artificial general intelligence, has firmly held that it is an important experiment in how to handle high-stakes research.
Now six months later, the policy team has published a paper examining the impact of the decision thus far. Alongside it, the lab has released a version of the model, known as GPT-2, that's half the size of the full one, which has still not been released.
In May, a few months after GPT-2's initial debut, OpenAI revised its stance on withholding the full code to what it calls a "staged release"—the staggered release of incrementally larger versions of the model in a ramp-up to the full one. In February, it published a version of the model that was merely 8% of the size of the full one. It published another roughly a quarter of the full version before the most recent release. During this process, it also partnered with selected research institutions to study the full model's implications.
[...] The authors concluded that after careful monitoring, OpenAI had not yet found any attempts of malicious use but had seen multiple beneficial applications, including in code autocompletion, grammar help, and developing question-answering systems for medical assistance. As a result, the lab felt that releasing the most recent code was ultimately more beneficial. Other researchers argue that several successful efforts to replicate GPT-2 have made OpenAI's withholding of the code moot anyway.
OpenAI Can No Longer Hide Its Alarmingly Good Robot 'Fake News' Writer
But it may not ultimately be up to OpenAI. This week, Wired magazine reported that two young computer scientists from Brown University—Aaron Gokaslan, 23, and Vanya Cohen, 24—had published what they called a recreation of OpenAI's (shelved) original GPT-2 software on the internet for anyone to download. The pair said their work was to prove that creating this kind of software doesn't require an expensive lab like OpenAI (backed by $2 billion in endowment and corporate dollars). They also don't believe such a software would cause imminent danger to society.
Also at BBC.
See also: Elon Musk: Computers will surpass us 'in every single way'
Previously: OpenAI Develops Text-Generating Algorithm, Considers It Too Dangerous to Release
Back in 2017 Long Island Ice Tea – known for its undistinguished, barely drinkable sugar-water – changed its name to "Long Blockchain Corp." Its shares surged to a peak of 400% over their pre-announcement price. The company announced no specific integrations with any kind of blockchain, nor has it made any such integrations since.
[...] The most remarkable thing about this incredibly stupid story is that LBCC wasn't the peak of the blockchain bubble – rather, it was the start of blockchain's final pump-and-dump. By the standards of 2022's blockchain grifters, LBCC was small potatoes, a mere $138m sugar-water grift.
[...] They were amateurs. Their attempt to "make fetch happen" only succeeded for a brief instant. By contrast, the superpredators of the crypto bubble were able to make fetch happen over an improbably long timescale, deploying the most powerful reality distortion fields since Pets.com.
[...] Like any Ponzi scheme, crypto was a way to separate normies from their savings through the pretense that they were "investing" in a vast enterprise – but the only real money ("fiat" in cryptospeak) in the system was the hardscrabble retirement savings of working people, which the bubble's energetic inflaters swapped for illiquid, worthless shitcoins.
We've stopped believing in the illusory billions. Sam Bankman-Fried is under house arrest. But the people who gave him money – and the nimbler Ponzi artists who evaded arrest – are looking for new scams to separate the marks from their money.
Take Morganstanley, who spent 2021 and 2022 hyping cryptocurrency as a massive growth opportunity:
Today, Morganstanley wants you to know that AI is a $6 trillion opportunity.
Inside the secret list of websites that make AI like ChatGPT sound smart:
AI chatbots have exploded in popularity over the past four months, stunning the public with their awesome abilities, from writing sophisticated term papers to holding unnervingly lucid conversations.
Chatbots cannot think like humans: They do not actually understand what they say. They can mimic human speech because the artificial intelligence that powers them has ingested a gargantuan amount of text, mostly scraped from the internet.
This text is the AI's mainsource of information about the world as it is being built, and it influences how it responds to users. If it aces the bar exam, for example, it's probably because its training data included thousands of LSAT practice sites.
Tech companies have grown secretive about what they feed the AI. So The Washington Post set out to analyze one of these data sets to fully reveal the types of proprietary, personal, and often offensive websites that go into an AI's training data.
To look inside this black box, we analyzed Google's C4 data set, a massive snapshot of the contents of 15 million websites that have been used to instruct some high-profile English-language AIs, called large language models, including Google's T5 and Facebook's LLaMA. (OpenAI does not disclose what datasets it uses to train the models backing its popular chatbot, ChatGPT)
The Post worked with researchers at the Allen Institute for AI on this investigation and categorized the websites using data from Similarweb, a web analytics company. About a third of the websites could not be categorized, mostly because they no longer appear on the internet. Those are not shown.
We then ranked the remaining 10 million websites based on how many "tokens" appeared from each in the data set. Tokens are small bits of text used to process disorganized information — typically a word or phrase.
One of the most highly-trafficked financial news websites in the world is creating AI-generated stories that bear an uncanny resemblance to stories published just hours earlier by other competitors:
Investing.com, a Tel Aviv-based site owned by Joffre Capital, is a financial news and information hub that provides a mix of markets data and investing tips and trends. But increasingly, the site has been relying on AI to create its stories, which often appear to be thinly-veiled copies of human-written stories written elsewhere.
[...] Pere Monguió, the head of content at FXStreet, told Semafor in an email that he and his team noticed several months ago that Investing was publishing stories similar to their site's articles. FXStreet's 60-person team monitors and quickly analyzes developments in global currencies. By pumping out AI articles, Investing was eroding FXStreet's edge, Monguió said.
"Using AI to rewrite exclusive content from competitors is a threat to journalism and original content creation," he said.
[...] "This isn't truly a new thing," Lawrence Greenberg, senior vice president and chief legal officer at The Motley Fool, said in an email. "We have seen, and acted against, people plagiarizing our content from time to time, and if you're right about what's going on, AI has achieved a level of human intelligence that copies good content and makes it mediocre."
See also: Sports Illustrated Published Articles by Fake, AI-Generated Writers
The future of Sports Illustrated looked dire Friday after the publisher of the diminished outlet announced mass layoffs because its license to use the iconic brand's name in print and digital was revoked:
The Arena Group — which had been roiled by reports that the fabled magazine published AI-generated content — admitted to failing to make a $3.75 million quarterly licensing payment to Authentic Brands Group due this week.
As a result, the publicly-traded Arena announced Thursday it would make a "significant reduction" in its workforce of more than 100 journalists.
SI's unionized workers received a memo Friday telling them "some employees will be terminated immediately, and paid in lieu of the 60-day applicable notice period under the [union contract]."
[...] The outlet's website had a smattering of fresh stories Friday, suggesting a skeleton crew was still employed.
Meanwhile, SI's annual Swimsuit edition – which launched the careers of supermodels from Cheryl Tiegs to Tyra Banks – has been completed and will be released in the spring, a source close to the situation told The Post.
Also at NBC News, CNN and HuffPost.
Related: Sports Illustrated Published Articles by Fake, AI-Generated Writers
(Score: 1, Interesting) by anubi on Thursday November 30, @09:27AM (10 children)
https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/11/22/meet-the-first-spanish-ai-model-earning-up-to-10000-per-month [euronews.com]
I'll let the rest of you speculate on where this is going.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Ingar on Thursday November 30, @11:41AM (9 children)
It's pretty clear where this is going: the future of corporate media is AI-generated. It's faster, it's cheaper, it's easier.
I can't wait until the content industry completely removes the human from the equation and flood the media landscape with
a neverending deluge of AI-generated rubbish.
-- What is a knockout like you doing in a computer generated gin joint like this? - William T. Riker, "11001001"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DannyB on Thursday November 30, @06:34PM (7 children)
It seems that at present AI generated content cannot be protected by copyright.
So this seems a problem for content industries replacing humans with AI.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by Ingar on Thursday November 30, @07:21PM (3 children)
Nothing Congress can't fix.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday November 30, @08:09PM (1 child)
Nothing Congress can't be bribed to fix.
Laws for the highest bidder.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday December 01, @03:03AM
Recent court decision:
https://www.reuters.com/legal/ai-generated-art-cannot-receive-copyrights-us-court-says-2023-08-21/ [reuters.com]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 02, @05:29PM
Odd use of the word "fix".
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday November 30, @11:21PM (1 child)
Is that in the legislation, or is it court decisions on something that is not specified in the law?
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday December 04, @09:41PM
See Reziac's post above. [soylentnews.org]
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Mykl on Friday December 01, @12:02AM
This is a really interesting one. Typically a human working for a company assigns copyright to the company when they are paid for their work. My guess is that the company will assume they can just hold copyright on anything produced 'for them'. However, if the author is an AI then they don't qualify for the copyright that could then be assigned. Perhaps this means that all of Drew Ortiz' pieces can be freely copied and reproduced without restriction!
I would love to see someone do this just to test the waters. Good luck finding someone willing to blow the money on the court costs though.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 02, @05:21PM
I think it's inevitable.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by Opportunist on Thursday November 30, @09:31AM (2 children)
Additional fingers are not really anything anyone gives a hoot about in a swimsuit edition.
See, that't the disadvantage of AI, AI was never a horny teenager going through puberty, so how would it know?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30, @09:37AM (1 child)
Wait till you see AI gay porn!
(Score: 5, Funny) by Opportunist on Thursday November 30, @10:39AM
"When I said he's one giant asshole, this is NOT what I meant!"
(Score: 5, Interesting) by khallow on Thursday November 30, @01:05PM (15 children)
Glancing at the Wikipedia page [wikipedia.org] for the CEO, Ross Levinsohn, I find that his bio is a trail of destruction [wikipedia.org] with stints at many companies ending in failure and some new suckers hiring him at the next destination. For example, looks like he destroyed value in Alta Vista, Fox, Yahoo, Scout Media, LA Times, and now this. Who hires people like this and for what reasons?
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30, @01:24PM (1 child)
Many news websites have become unprofitable from video competition and generally not useful because of weird ideologues. If they published these in a print magazine, those are dying too.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 30, @01:44PM
Even as a grave digger, Ross Levinsohn seems to bring some problems with him.
(Score: 4, Informative) by ledow on Thursday November 30, @02:19PM (6 children)
You do know how SoylentNews became popular, right?
Slashdot sold out to a series of company, with DICE being the one that tried to monetise Slashdot (and Sourceforge.net I think).
There was a paid-for article about a hoodie or something ridiculous. At that point, everyone started to leave and fell into SoylentNews because it's also based on Slash codebase (but a far more modern version than has ever been used at Slashdot up until that point).
Happens all the time.
(Score: 2) by kreuzfeld on Thursday November 30, @04:13PM (5 children)
I hadn't ever noticed that SoylentNews became *popular*, exactly...
(Score: 5, Touché) by pTamok on Thursday November 30, @06:13PM (4 children)
Only among the discerning elite.
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Thursday November 30, @11:13PM (3 children)
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Friday December 01, @09:06AM (2 children)
The first rule of SoylentNews is that we don't talk about the secret handshake!
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 01, @05:01PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Saturday December 09, @08:13AM
Yep.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SomeRandomGeek on Thursday November 30, @08:15PM (5 children)
Corporate types see a company's brand as one of its biggest assets, sometimes worth billions of dollars. But how do you turn such an asset into actual money? You quietly start selling inferior products and services. For a while, you are able to charge a premium from customers that trust you, until the customers catch on and your brand turns to shit. It happens all the time, and it sucks to be the customer who gets burned.
For me personally, the monetization of Levi's was the worst.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 30, @11:07PM
(Score: 3, Informative) by deimtee on Thursday November 30, @11:30PM (3 children)
Yes. As someone who does a fair bit of DYI and knows a few tradies, this is especially prominent in the world of tools. Brands that had a top-notch reputation with my grandfather or father started turning out cheap trash. You could probably draw graphs of declining quality vs time and price vs time and note the lag between them. That gap represents a one-off short term profit at the expense of reputation.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by fliptop on Friday December 01, @02:30AM (2 children)
In the case of brands like Stanley and Delta, that happened when they were bought by Black and Decker. The latter had always been considered a "hobby user" brand and no serious professional would buy their tools b/c they didn't last. Similar thing happened to Craftsman.
Most of my woodshop tools are Delta and were made before it was sold to Rockwell. They're all still running strong and when I have friends over who are also woodworkers they drool over my tools. My daughters, if they decide to sell my tools when I'm gone, should clean up quite nicely.
Whenever I see old tools at the flea market, I buy them, even if I don't need them. Their value will continue to go up.
Stumpy Nubs has a great video [youtube.com] on the topic.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by deimtee on Friday December 01, @12:03PM
Funny you picked that one. Black and Decker was a top brand 70 years ago. My grandfather swore by them. After they trashed their reputation for a few dollars they were still big enough to pick up other smaller brands and do the same to them. Sometime in the next few years I will probably inherit the Black and Decker drill press my dad inherited from granddad. Its still running fine with no wobble or flex at all.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 08, @06:44AM
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday November 30, @05:05PM
AI generated articles are an old hat by now. But AI generated writers, that's new.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by gznork26 on Thursday November 30, @05:36PM
Humans can be so hard to deal with, so why bother using them in a product that is purely digital? Musicians and comedians that only perform over video link can be replaced with AI people. So could politicians... just as Adam Selene!
Khipu were Turing complete.