Monday, March 4th 2024
CNET Demoted to Untrusted Sources by Wikipedia Editors Due to AI-Generated Content
Once trusted as the staple of technology journalism, the website CNET has been publically demoted to Untrusted Sources on Wikipedia. CNET has faced public criticism since late 2022 for publishing AI-generated articles without disclosing humans did not write them. This practice has culminated in CNET being demoted from Trusted to Untrusted Sources on Wikipedia, following extensive debates between Wikipedia editors. CNET's reputation first declined in 2020 when it was acquired by publisher Red Ventures, who appeared to prioritize advertising and SEO traffic over editorial standards. However, the AI content scandal accelerated CNET's fall from grace. After discovering the AI-written articles, Wikipedia editors argued that CNET should be removed entirely as a reliable source, citing Red Ventures' pattern of misinformation.
One editor called for targeting Red Ventures as "a spam network." AI-generated content poses familiar challenges to spam bots - machine-created text that is frequently low quality or inaccurate. However, CNET claims it has stopped publishing AI content. This controversy highlights rising concerns about AI-generated text online. Using AI-generated stories might seem interesting as it lowers the publishing time; however, these stories usually rank low in the Google search index, as the engine detects and penalizes AI-generated content probably because Google's AI detection algorithms used the same training datasets as models used to write the text. Lawsuits like The New York Times v. OpenAI also allege AIs must scrape vast amounts of text without permission. As AI capabilities advance, maintaining information quality on the web will require increased diligence. But demoting once-reputable sites like CNET as trusted sources when they disregard ethics and quality control helps set a necessary precedent. Below, you can see the Wikipedia table about CNET.
Sources:
Futurism, via Tom's Hardware
One editor called for targeting Red Ventures as "a spam network." AI-generated content poses familiar challenges to spam bots - machine-created text that is frequently low quality or inaccurate. However, CNET claims it has stopped publishing AI content. This controversy highlights rising concerns about AI-generated text online. Using AI-generated stories might seem interesting as it lowers the publishing time; however, these stories usually rank low in the Google search index, as the engine detects and penalizes AI-generated content probably because Google's AI detection algorithms used the same training datasets as models used to write the text. Lawsuits like The New York Times v. OpenAI also allege AIs must scrape vast amounts of text without permission. As AI capabilities advance, maintaining information quality on the web will require increased diligence. But demoting once-reputable sites like CNET as trusted sources when they disregard ethics and quality control helps set a necessary precedent. Below, you can see the Wikipedia table about CNET.
26 Comments on CNET Demoted to Untrusted Sources by Wikipedia Editors Due to AI-Generated Content
It's not really about what people think about wikipedia.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources
P.S.
This response was A.I. generated
But it's good you've highlighted the major problem wiki had/has: that of male dominance. Second to that is the western slant. But, as it's a male-dominated westernised output source, then it seems fitting for it to comment on CNET, which is also male dominated western output. No?
Other than that, IMO, it's good that a press outlet has been red flagged for using AI as its journalistic output. I figure the best way an AI could serve journalism is for it to be used to make it grammatically sound and remove emotional bias from an author's article. In other words, you write about something and your personal bias seeps in but you ask AI to rewrite it and remove emotional tags. Make it more neutral as a source of info.
As for the rest, LLMs are a wonderful tool when used for their intended purpose. Sadly, currently the Internet is just scripts scraping popular words, feeding them to an LLM and publishing the result with no vetting or proofreading. Finding any information in this pile of SEO excrement is increasingly difficult.
CNet well no better place to get malware downloads hehe
AI well wouldn't it be sourcing from wiki content seeing it's basically a search engine coded like google/ bing/... searches are pay to play or in search pay to be on top so pony up some AI bucks wiki :laugh:
If you care at all about the integrity of your work as an author (or your media outlet stepping back a bit) you would never let AI just take the wheel.
This is in part why the writers guild wigged so hard about AI with their contracts.
Trying to use AI in place of actual human thought and originality is morally bankrupt.
This wouldn't be the first time a struggling news site was bought up by some VCs, staff reduced to a skeleton crew, and journalism replaced by AI content that's geared towards attracting SEO engines instead of any kind of quality journalism.
RIP SharkyExtreme, Anandtech, Techreport, and more.
CNET does indeed suck though. Just recently I was looking to complain to them about their promotion of a scam lifetime 2+TB cloud storage deal. Users had been complaining that the service would vastly limit the amount of storage, their access to the files, or incredibly slow speeds. It sucks since I remember them being a great resource for tech news. Atleast we still got TPU!I can confidently say, this was not written by ai....
Yeah I know what I said was way to true :slap:
www.livelaw.in/top-stories/supreme-court-wikipedia-courts-hewlett-packard-india-sales-pvt-ltd-vs-commissioner-of-customs-import-2023-livelaw-sc-43-219214
I acknowledge there are tons of issues with Wikipedia itself, but this is clearly a correct course of action regarding CNET.