UK newspaper giant fills space with AI-assisted articles
- Reference: 1678260606
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/03/08/uk_publisher_using_ai/
- Source link:
Three stories written with the help of machine-learning tools were published on InYourArea.co.uk, which produces feeds of nearby goings-on in Blighty. One piece, titled [1]Seven Things to do in Newport , is a listicle pulling together information on places and activities available in the eponymous Welsh city.
Reach CEO Jim Mullen said the machine-written articles are checked and approved by human editors before they're published online.
[2]
"We produced our first AI content in the last ten days, but this is led by editorial," he said, [3]according to The Guardian. "It was all AI-produced, but the data was obviously put together by a journalist, and whether it was good enough to publish was decided by an editor."
[4]
[5]
"There are loads of ethics [issues] around AI and journalistic content," Mullen admitted. "The way I look at it, we produce lots of content based on actual data. It can be put together in a well-read [piece] that I think AI can do. We are trying to apply it to areas we already get traffic to allow journalists to focus on content that editors want written."
[6]Salesforce latest to sprinkle ChatGPT on itself, will ask language models to write code
[7]Now Microsoft injects Copilot AI into Dynamics 365
[8]Elon Musk yearns for AI devs to build 'anti-woke' rival ChatGPT bot
[9]Why ChatGPT should be considered a malevolent AI – and be destroyed
Mullen's comments have been questioned by journalists, however, given that Reach announced plans to slash hundreds of jobs in January. The National Union of Journalists [10]said 102 editorial positions would be cut, putting 253 journalists at risk, whilst 180 vacancies would be withdrawn.
Reach's latest financial results, released on Tuesday, show total revenues for 2022 were £601.4 million ($711.6 million) – a decrease of 2.3 percent compared to the year before. Operating profit plunged 27.4 percent to £106.1 million ($125 million). In a bid to make up for losses, the publicly traded company is focused on cutting operating costs by up to six percent this year.
"The current trading environment remains challenging and we expect this to continue in 2023, with sustained inflation and suppressed market demand for digital advertising. Although input costs remain elevated, we are confident that our cost action plan will enable us to deliver a 5–6 percent like for like reduction in our operating cost base for FY23," Reach's [11]full-year report read [PDF].
[12]
The Register has asked London-based Reach for further comment. (A few of us vultures once worked for what is now Reach, previously known as Trinity Mirror, an empire built from absorbing hundreds of titles around Britain.)
Reach isn't the only publisher rolling out AI-generated articles while reducing its count of human reporters. CNET owner Red Ventures [13]laid off scribes last week and has promised to double down on machine-written content despite [14]complaints that those articles contained errors and plagiarism.
Meanwhile, BuzzFeed has produced [15]quizzes with the help of ChatGPT, and Arena Group [16]published botched health-related articles for Men's Health . Both publishers have also axed employees – in December 2022 and February 2023, respectively.
[17]
The Register remains fully written and edited by humans.
And if you spot any errors, congratulations: you passed the human reader test – ed.
®Get our [18]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.inyourarea.co.uk/news/seven-things-to-do-in-newport/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZAhq1v0wm5S66QguS7JIKQAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/mar/07/mirror-and-express-owner-publishes-first-articles-written-using-ai
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZAhq1v0wm5S66QguS7JIKQAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZAhq1v0wm5S66QguS7JIKQAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/07/salesforces_asks_language_models_to/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/07/microsoft_dynamics365_copilot_ai/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/06/ai_roundup/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/02/chatgpt_considered_harmful/
[10] https://www.nuj.org.uk/resource/reach-to-cut-200-jobs.html
[11] https://www.reachplc.com/content/dam/reach/corporate/documents/results-and-reports/2022-FY-Announcement-FINAL.pdf.downloadasset.pdf
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZAhq1v0wm5S66QguS7JIKQAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/2/23622231/cnet-layoffs-ai-articles-seo-red-ventures
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/23/ai_news_roundup/
[15] https://www.buzzfeed.com/badge/ai-quiz
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/13/in_brief_ai/
[17] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZAhq1v0wm5S66QguS7JIKQAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[18] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Except when they post videos.
I was begining to think I was the only person who prefered written material over video. I abhor the current trend to everything being video only.
chatGPT
that's just what an advanced AI would say though...
It's what AI would have written...
"The Register remains fully written and edited by humans*."
*Except where we have filled half the article with tweets
The ship sailed a long time ago
The majority of newspapers stopped reporting on the News a long time ago. The editors allowed the reporters to spew their ideological political views instead of sticking to the facts and allowing the readers to make up their own minds.
The end result was that the vast majority of the public, in all Western countries have nothing but contempt for the press.
Hearing that these same 'journalists' are all losing their jobs gives me great satisfaction. It really does. Now they are free to spew their sanctimonious hypocritical viewpoints on twitter, where I can safely ignore them.
Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch
Will anyone notice?
The M-E-N is more like someones twitter feed than a news website.
(ad) (ad) (ad) (ad)
Sensational headline (We're all going to starve!!!), two paragraphs of fluff, then one sentence saying that the price of baked beans has gone up in a local shop.
(ad)
Half-a dozen pictures from the archives (now spread across as many pages to generate more clicks).
(ad) (ad) (ad)
Latest celebrity promo.
(ad) (ad) (ad) (ad) (ad) (ad) (ad) (ad) (ad) (ad) (ad) (ad) (ad) (ad) (ad) (ad) (ad) (ad) ...................................................
Re: Will anyone notice?
There's even a t-shirt: https://www.redmolotov.com/daily-sexpest-tshirt
Re: Will anyone notice?
I like [1]Kevin Bloody Wilson's view of all this crap ... the point is that YouTube has no adverts shown in most of his videos!
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao5Kq0hJwzY
Re: Will anyone notice?
And the page jumps around uncontrollably while all the ads load, rendering the whole page unreadable
I've given up using local newspaper websites
Coffee is good for you, coffee is bad for you
Rinse and repeat on a 6 weeks cycle.
Also the same treatment for: chocolate, sex, wine, exercise, did we do coffee yet?, etc.
Re: Coffee is good for you, coffee is bad for you
Coffee, sex, chocolate & booze! Today is a good day to die!
Re: Coffee is good for you, coffee is bad for you
Tomorrow even better!
Re: Coffee is good for you, coffee is bad for you
And cycling. Bloody cycling; cycling should be banned.
Artificial plagarism
There is no intelligence in these AI systems.
They have merely automated the process of googling a few articles and cutting and pasting the results.
With no real journalists to write the original pieces the whole thing falls apart. We just get a bunch of applications blindly copying each other and producing nonsense.
Although given the current news output it may be a while before anyone notices.
ASSES
Maybe the "AI" software should instead be termed Automated Screen Scrape Encapsulation System .
Re: Artificial plagarism
Matt Parker did a [1]video about the price of a book on Amazon going through the roof as two bots ran amok.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sseSi0k3Ecg
(Without irony) This is news ?
Certainly in the UK redtops, "news" is already an algorithmic process. Generally based on reflecting the views of the readership back to them with words like "EXPLODE", "FURY", "UNLEASH" as separators.
Anyone who has the MS Start feature enabled will know this - and endless parade of clickbaity stories that all push an agenda.
Re: (Without irony) This is news ?
I was immediately reminded of this: [1]https://www.theregister.com/2008/06/10/have_your_say/ . Unfortunately it looks like the twat-o-tron has gone 404 - perhaps succumbing to a stroke in a fit of virtual apoplexy, but more likely has been redeployed to writing policy documents for the home office.
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2008/06/10/have_your_say/
Artificial Intelligent...
It's a big step up from Retch's usual Un Intelligent generated content.
Re: Artificial Intelligent...
Yeah! I thought it was pretty good tbh. You can tell it was done by AI, there were no spelling mistakes or factual blunders.
Re: Artificial Intelligent...
...no spelling mistakes...
So thay did'nt plaigarise teh sauce fromt he Grauniad than :D
Re: Spelling Mistakes
I leave several in my books. It helps when some [redacted][redacted][redacted] numpty steals the text and publishes it on Amazon under their name despite the original also being on Amazon.
AMZN can be real dickheads about taking down the plagiarized version even with a DMCA notice and proof that it was stolen.
Now that ChatGPT and other pretend AI systems... Show me their Turing Test results please... are being used as an excuse to lay off journo's we are getting to the point where it won't be long before even the TV news readers will be deep fakes. We truly are doomed.
won't notice
Reach "local" news sites I have visited are a waste of space (& adblockers a must as without they take an eternity to load & even then sometimes crash randomly) as there's little in the way of actual news, just plenty of click bait style headlines.
If they do have some local news it's typically published far later than on the BBC local area section
Re: won't notice
Came here to say this.
The Birmingham Mail Live website is unusable with the amount of adverts, videos, all other sorts of shit being loaded. But then nothing on there is worth reading so I'm not sure if it's a problem.
Re: won't notice
There's an interesting young journo on that paper. Her stuff is refreshingly different, I find. eg
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink-news/im-common-muck-spent-150-23194880
Subeditors lacking
"Reach CEO Jim Mullen said the machine-written articles are checked and approved by human editors before they're published online."
I doubt it. Newspapers long ago got rid of subeditors in order to cut costs.
News headline: “Reach output contains traces of intelligence”?
This is a first, their usual output is so dire that even so-called AI must be an improvement. I struggle to see how AI is going to cover the topic occupying the space not taken up by Love Island and Katie Price though - namely what the local free food they tried was like. I suppose the AI can review Spam though….
Reach already owns The Daily Star which has already reached rock bottom in terms of quality and started digging using heavy machinery. I'm far from convinced that adding AI's is going to further reduce the quality in this case; probably just the opposite.
To make the point; a number of years ago the Royal Navy decided to buy some new 5 inch guns for the new warships being built. These are the guns sitting on front of a big warship, which are 5" wide, and throw quite big shells.
To quote from elseware "When the contract was made public, British tabloid journalism reached a new level of hilarious incompetence, as the Daily Star newspaper published a piece claiming the MoD had “blown £183 million on a 5-inch gun which is the length of a toothbrush”.
[1]link in case you think i'm making that up.
So yes, the quality output from Reach can hardly get worse with the addition of an AI; you'd hope that an AI would avoid these sort of errors. (Mind you, you'd hope that humans would as well...)
[1] https://dailycaller.com/2016/07/30/british-tabloid-upset-because-they-thought-government-was-building-a-toothbrush-sized-gun/
OTOH the Star did give us Lettucecam. Which brought some comic relief during the mercifully short-lived Truss premiership.
"News of the World" meets ChatGPT?
At least that anathema was avoided, thank God but I suspect even Lucifer's firm would steer clear of such an abomination.
> The Register remains fully written and edited by humans.
Thanks.