I turned to my wife recently to ask her if she had heard that her favorite performer of all time, Bruce Springsteen, was launching what would be a shocking \u201cfarewell\u201d tour after having just finished a multi-year, multi-continent tour.<\/p>\n
She quickly raced to look but could find no sign of it. The reason I asked was a series of postings that appeared in my Facebook feed. It turns out those postings were some of the many, many false items purporting to be news that have shown up in the past couple of months. They\u2019re produced using artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve written plenty about how our newsroom is using AI as a tool to go deeper and be more accurate in our journalism, but the other side to AI is the false material getting published all over the place as genuine. The fake stuff is called AI slop — AI-generated junk content, designed to lure clicks with fake or misleading claims — and it is showing up in social media, videos and many other places you might visit.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve long used Facebook not for news but for hobbies and interests. I join groups that seem interesting, just to learn more about topics I find intriguing. The posts I see are a diversion from the news.<\/p>\n
Of late, though, my feed is loaded with AI slop. Phony items about developments in television shows, many of which I don\u2019t watch. False reports about performers touring or being ill. I see so many fake reports that I find myself questioning almost everything I see, even if it\u2019s legitimate. And I don\u2019t want to have to go searching just to know if what I\u2019m reading is real.<\/p>\n
Why is this happening? Money. Creators of AI slop can collect big payoffs for anything that attracts views. AI helps them rapidly churn out mounds of the slop, knowing that only a bit of it needs to go viral for them to get paid. A recent study suggested that as much as 40 percent of Facebook\u2019s long-form posts might be AI-generated.<\/p>\n
Sadly, most experts believe AI slop is in its infancy. We\u2019re likely to see an explosion of false information that seems convincingly authentic about everything from news to sports to entertainment. You\u2019re likely to be bombarded with it from all angles. Many will have a hard time knowing what the truth is on any piece of news.<\/p>\n
How will we get anything done, as a community or a nation, if we all work with a different menu of fictions we\u2019ve been led to believe are facts? The scenario reminds me of the Tower of Babel story in the Bible, where God halted progress on a tower to the heavens by replacing a single shared language with many, leaving the builders unable to communicate. Like the Tower of Babel, AI slop leaves us speaking different versions of reality, unable to build anything together.<\/p>\n
The rise of AI slop will compel all of us to become active consumers of news. Rather than accepting what rolls across our screens, we will have to seek out sources we know are trustworthy.<\/p>\n
I think AI slop might be a boon for trusted newsrooms like ours at cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer. We verify everything we publish. AI is a tool for reporters and editors, who do the work the make sure our content is accurate. Human eyes and hands are on all of our work.<\/p>\n
As people feel like they are drowning in information they can\u2019t trust, I suspect they will turn to powerful brands like ours, knowing we continue to maintain high standards. The newsrooms known for integrity and truth will have more value in a world of outlets that churn out fiction in pursuit of easy money.<\/p>\n
If you feel that way about our content, I have some good news. Google now lets you tell it which news outlets you trust, so their stories show up first when you search. The tool is called \u201cPreferred Sources.\u201d For a direct link for choosing cleveland.com, go here.<\/a> <\/p>\n Once you click our site, then whenever you search for news, you\u2019ll see something from us listed.<\/p>\n I think the day is coming when everyone will have to identify their trusted sources, to get around the infinite number of phony news items that will fill their screens. For starters, at least, you can get a couple of links to us in Google searches for now.<\/p>\n We keep saying that artificial intelligence is likely to result in the biggest transformation in journalism we\u2019ve ever seen. We\u2019re excited about all of the upside we\u2019ve been discussing, but we\u2019re also focused on the damage it can do and how we can overcome it. That\u2019s not just the work of a newsroom, though. It\u2019s work that all who believe in an informed society have to undertake.<\/p>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I turned to my wife recently to ask her if she had heard that her favorite performer of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-120819","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}