02/27/2024

How a Small Newspaper’s Website Became an AI-generated Clickbait Factory

A network of sites exists that sling seemingly AI-made content

In his spare time, Tony Eastin likes to dabble in the stock market. One day last year, he Googled a pharmaceutical company that seemed like a promising investment. One of the first search results Google served up on its news tab was listed as coming from the Clayton County Register, a newspaper in northeastern Iowa. He clicked and read. The story was garbled and devoid of useful information—and so were all the other finance-themed posts filling the site, which had absolutely nothing to do with northeastern Iowa.

"I knew right away there was something off," he said.

There's plenty of junk on the internet, but this struck Eastin as strange: Why would a small Midwestern paper churn out crappy blog posts about retail investing?

Please select this link to read the complete article from WIRED.