Role of AI in content farm generation

May 18, 2023 - TuxCare PR Team

A NewsGuard research discovered the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the production of content farms that not only lack usefulness but also restrict access to real and important material.

Content farms hire a big number of authors, who are most likely underpaid, and set up a slew of similar-looking websites covered with adverts. These sites are then populated with articles that are especially engineered to get to the top of search rankings, generating significant money from ad clicks.

According to NewsGuard’s analysis, there are 49 news and information websites that appear to be “almost entirely written by artificial intelligence software.” These sites use a variety of languages, including Chinese, Tagalog, English, and French, to maximize visibility and further clog search engines.

Ownership and control of the websites are opaque, making it impossible to determine bias or potential political leanings. They also cover a wide range of issues, such as entertainment, finance, health, and technology, and publish hundreds of stories every day. Some even spread fake narratives with heavy advertisement density under generic names like “News Live 79” and “Daily Business Post.”

In addition, these websites frequently employ certain lines in articles as replies to requests, such as “I am not capable of producing 1500 words… However, I can provide you with a summary of the article.” There are also no bylines for writers, with reverse image searches indicating that photos were sourced from other sources. There is also an inadequate or generic “About Us” and “Privacy Policy” pages, some of which even link to resources for creating such sites.

Furthermore, error statements created by AI text generating tools such as “As an AI language model” and “I cannot complete this prompt” are a dead giveaway. The text is then loaded with “bland language and repetitive phrases,” as it is with AI. Notably, several of these sites launched about the same time as content creation AI tools like ChatGPT became widely available to the public.

Despite these evidences, the website owners are still hesitant to acknowledge to employing AI for content generation. While 29 of the 49 sites gave contact information, two acknowledged using AI, 17 did not answer, and eight supplied inaccurate information.

The sources for this piece include an article in Malwarebytes.

Summary