The first thing I stated when I dialed Bert Etling in the old-fashioned manner was that I was one of his.
I insisted that I’m a real person.
He could have believed me. Editor Etling has unexpectedly found himself engaged in a future small-town news war with robots.
In the 21,000-person town in southern Oregon known for holding the yearly Shakespeare festival, Etling serves as editor of Ashland News. After the Ashland Daily Tidings, the regular newspaper, failed three years ago, his website—a nonprofit with two reporters—was born.
Etling had also served as the editor there. His career has been in small-town news. He claims that there was a noticeable sense of loss and melancholy when the Daily Tidings ceased publication for the first time since 1876 and subsequently shut down its website as well.
He had already set up a Google alert for any mention of the Daily Tidings online. There was silence. For a 145-year-old local institution, his email box of notifications was like a memory book.
However, it resumed pinging at some point last year. Etling was receiving numerous indications that the now-defunct Daily Tidings was back online and publishing new stories.
For little Ashland, the site’s masthead included eight reporters. Etling contacted one of them to find out what was happening because he knew him.
He was completely perplexed, according to Etling. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. It’s not for them that I write. There is no longer a Daily Tidings.
As it turns out, it’s still dead—literally, no one is employed there. According to an examination conducted by Oregon Public Broadcasting this past week, artificial intelligence bots are now reporting and writing on the entire website under fictitious or stolen identities.
They located a reporter who resides in the UK and was unaware that he was working as a journalist in southern Oregon.
The website publishes roughly five pieces per day, the most of which are rewritten by AI algorithms after being lifted from legitimate sites like Ashland News or The Oregonian.
Large ad-streaming firms like Google fill the site with pop-up videos and ad banners.
He looked considering suing the AI operation, whoever or whatever it is, the former proprietor of the Daily Tidings, the now-defunct genuine paper, told OPB. However, according to his attorneys, it is coming from somewhere outside of the US, most likely China. Pursuing a ghost would be it.
Etling remarked, “It’s like having your own Doppelgänger.”
The events that are taking place in Ashland are not unique. AI bots are being used by websites that appear everywhere to give the impression of news, mainly by rewriting or repurposing stories from the actual local media. Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, such the depressingly named Spin Rewriter, can read an article and turn it into 1,000 human-quality facsimiles, which are then distributed online like verbal sewage.
The Hoodline news banner is a website in Seattle that displays stories that have been automatically generated with fictitious bylines. This past week, on December 11, intrepid reporter Aaron Washington—who isn’t real—wrote nine stories based on press releases and other news sources. The stories ranged from a feature on a preschool in Seattle to the Tacoma city budget, the weather, and a cold case police mystery.
There is little doubt that a carping actual reporter cannot produce that level of output.
One former Hoodline staffer, who lost her job to the bots, claimed that artificial persons who have never visited any of the communities they cover have supplanted traditional shoe-leather reporting because they lack feet.
There are moments when the absence of human oversight is obvious. A Hoodline AI bot malfunctioned in October, turning a standard press statement about a prosecutor charging someone with murder into a sensationalized article that claimed the prosecutor was the murderer.
According to Etling, the scam journalism in Ashland has mainly been obnoxious. Since it’s a plagiarism operation, Ashland News, the actual local news source, has little chance of being copied.
Additionally, he meets with the Rotary Club and other organizations every day, and his two reporters are out in the neighborhood. He continued, “So people there know that we’re real people.”
However, the nagging feeling that no one believes anything nowadays isn’t getting any better.
According to Etling, they are contaminating the information space. They are eroding public confidence in publications. What we’re attempting to accomplish is corrupted. There isn’t much we can do about it, which makes it frustrating.
Last month, they attempted to distribute a print version of their web-only website to 17,000 households in the community.
According to Etling, it was our first and only print run to date. It gave us a physical form.
The question of authenticity or tangibility is crucial. When I’m out in public or at events in Seattle, the most common question I am asked is: Do you utilize AI to assist write your column? No, is the response. I use search engines, which have AI built in, but I’ve never even attempted asking it for help with writing.
I used to respond by joking that I hadn’t published a column of my own in months. Do you see what I mean? Because of what has started to occur in areas like Ashland, I no longer make that joke.
According to Etling, it may not be long before journalists are asked to confirm that they are real people, even though it seems dystopian.
He compared it as a proof-of-life type of thing. Are we real?
Perhaps, like a town crier, I might read my piece aloud to the public every week from a street corner downtown. To make sure I’m not a hologram, someone could stop by and prod me.
But really, it’s disturbing that artificial intelligence has already permeated human life to the point where scam robot news sources already plague small towns like Shakespeare’s Ashland.
When scientists started deciphering the human genome in the 1990s, I remember that they imposed a number of societal, legal, and ethical limitations on the use of gene data. For instance, no genetic marker-based insurance rate manipulation. No human clones were made. These limitations were approved by Congress. On the other hand, society is behaving helplessly in the face of corporate AI and another type of human cloning.
It’s clear that this is a problem that challenges society and goes much beyond my small sphere of media.
Regarding his robot competitor, Etling stated that the website should at least have a Google warning.
Are we real?
I’ve been asking questions for a living for 35 years, and this is the first time the question has come up. The fact that it’s happening now seems like it should be far more significant news to people than it is.
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