USA Today Staffers Think Site Is Using AI To Write Articles

Several mysterious bylines recently appeared on a USA Today website, leading to internal speculation that the articles were generated by artificial intelligence.

According to the Washington Post, several employees did not recognize the names of the authors of stories last week published on Reviewed, the USA Today-owned shopping recommendation site.

The NewsGuild of New York followed up on the suspicions and also found the articles in question to be “robotic.”

The union researched the authors of the pieces and found, well, nothing.

The "journalists" do not have profiles on LinkedIn. They fail to register on the Google search engine. There is no trace of them on the internet, anywhere.

https://twitter.com/nyguild/status/1716840706193473841?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1716840706193473841%7Ctwgr%5E2f2587bc20b54dad74112423cdfc36ce82f604ea%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fstyle%2Fmedia%2F2023%2F10%2F26%2Fusa-today-gannett-reviewed-ai-fake-writers%2F

A Washington Post reporter was also unable to locate any of the writers.

And while the reporter tracked down email addresses linked to the writers, the emails immediately “bounced back with a message indicating there was no such inbox.”

Go figure.

Still, Gannett denies the accusations that AI created the articles. The company insists the webpages were part of a deal with a marketing firm to "generate paid search-engine traffic."

“We expect all our vendors to comply with our ethical standards and have been assured by the marketing agency the content was NOT AI generated,” said a Gannett spokesperson.

That sounds like something a company that uses AI would say.

What's more, several of the articles have since been deleted from USA Today and Reviewed.

But not without an excuse, Gannett blames the removals on the articles failing to "meet our affiliate standards."

That also sounds like something a company that uses AI, and got caught, would say.

We want to be clear, we would not fault USA Today for replacing writers with AI. Not one bit.

See, artificial intelligence would undoubtedly be an upgrade over some of the writers on the USA Today payroll.

Like Mike Freeman and Nancy Armour, two dumb people who write poorly-formed articles about falsified racism in sports for USA Today.

Gannett ought to consider turning to AI for its sports section, no?

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