https://futurism.com/advon-ai-content
'A few years back, a writer in a developing country started doing contract work
for a company called AdVon Commerce, getting a few pennies per word to write
online product reviews.
But the writer — who like other AdVon sources interviewed for this story spoke
on condition of anonymity — recalls that the gig's responsibilities soon
shifted. Instead of writing, they were now tasked with polishing drafts
generated using an AI system the company was developing, internally dubbed MEL.
"They started using AI for content generation," the former AdVon worker told
us, "and paid even less than what they were paying before."
The former writer was asked to leave detailed notes on MEL's work — feedback
they believe was used to fine-tune the AI which would eventually replace their
role entirely.
The situation continued until MEL "got trained enough to write on its own,"
they said. "Soon after, we were released from our positions as writers."
"I suffered quite a lot," they added. "They were exploitative."
We first heard of AdVon last year, after staff at Gannett noticed product
reviews getting published on the website of
USA Today with bylines that
didn't seem to correspond to real people. The articles were stilted and
formulaic, leading the writers' union to accuse them of being "shoddy AI."
When Gannett blamed the strange articles on AdVon, we started digging. We soon
found AdVon had been running a similar operation at the magazine
Sports
Illustrated, publishing product reviews using bylines of fake writers with
fictional biographies and AI-generated profile pictures. The response was
explosive: the magazine's union wrote that it was "horrified," while its
publisher cut ties with AdVon and subsequently fired its CEO before losing the
rights to
Sports Illustrated entirely.
AdVon disputed neither that the bylines were fake nor that their profile
pictures had been generated using AI. But it insisted, at both
USA Today and
Sports Illustrated, that the actual articles had been written by actual
humans.
We wanted to learn more. What kind of a company creates fake authors for a
famous newspaper or magazine and operates them like sock puppets? Did AdVon
have other clients? And was it being truthful that the reviews had been created
by humans rather than AI?'
Via Esther Schindler, who wrote "Prepare to get upset."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
