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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
(Score: 4, Informative) by istartedi on Wednesday December 13 2023, @10:06AM (7 children)
I had my suspicions, but really noticed it when the market tanked at the beginning of the pandemic. Financial "news" sites continued to run "analysis" pieces with headlines like, "Why is WalMart down 5% today?". You'd click on the link and it was formulaic commentary about sales, trends, etc. that might have flown otherwise, albeit as rather bland; but it was obvious to anybody not living under a rock that WalMart was down 5% because the entire market was down about 5%. The tide had gone out, and bot publishers were now naked.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Ox0000 on Wednesday December 13 2023, @11:34AM (3 children)
I don't remember who said this:
Financial news sites are those pebbles...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 13 2023, @01:33PM (1 child)
I thought they are the poop-ers.
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Wednesday December 13 2023, @03:05PM
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday December 13 2023, @04:53PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 13 2023, @12:31PM (2 children)
What the financial news caters to is the notion that if somebody pays super-close attention to the market, they'll beat the professional traders and their carefully calibrated algorithms. Which they won't, because those carefully calibrated algorithms will generally have responded to whatever the article is about in the amount of time it takes the most attentive of individual investors to receive and read the headline.
Trying to beat the market as an individual investor is like trying to beat the casino at the slot machines.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 13 2023, @02:31PM (1 child)
Actually the real problem is when the big players lose they get their trades rolled back or at least some of them.
When the small timers win doing similar stuff they often get arrested and convicted: https://www.cnbc.com/id/39664612 [cnbc.com]
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quote_stuffing [wikipedia.org]
And: https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-51265169 [bbc.com]
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/29/flash-crash-trader-navinder-singh-sarao-sentenced-to-home-detention.html [cnbc.com]
So if you're not one of the approved big fish if you win doing the same things the big fish do you could end up in prison.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 13 2023, @06:04PM
Yes, the house also frequently rigs the game in its favor (LIBOR, the bank bailouts of 2008-9, etc). Which is a separate issue from the financial media misleading its audience in an effort to pretend that watching / reading their outlet will somehow un-rig the game.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin