A fake blog generated from thin air – and a little help from AI-text generator GPT-3 – convinced some of the Web’s savviest readers it was legit.

Liam Porr, a student at University of California, Berkeley, says he was able to generate dozens of fake posts for his made-up blog simply by feeding headlines to the AI-text generator.

Those few words were all that GPT-3 — which uses AI-driven predictive statistics to generate text – needed to spit-out full-length blog musings.

In fact, Porr got so good at feeding GPT-3 ideas, one of his fake posts zoomed to number one in popularity on Hacker News, a collaborative news aggregator.

“Porr says his experiment also shows a more mundane but still troubling alternative: People could use the tool to generate a lot of clickbait content,” observes Karen Hao, senior reporter, AI, MIT Technology Review.

In other AI-generated writing news:

*New Free AI Tool Allows You to Auto-Generate Text: A new tool has popped-up on the Web that enables you to play with AI-generated writing.

The app — provided by Primer Labs — allows you to:

*Paste in any document and instantly distill its essential elements, like who, what, where, etc.

*Paste in any document and instantly generate a summary of the document – complete with bullet points

*Paste in any document and ask questions about what it covers

Designed to showcase the prowess of Primer’s tech, the app is an eye-opener in terms of what’s currently possible with commercialized AI-generated writing – and where it’s headed.

Fortune writer Jeremy Kahn — who test-drove the tool — sees it as indicative of natural language processing’s “golden age.”

*Need A Quote from an Old Video?: Let AI Do It: Journalists searching for a pithy quote from decades-old video now have a new tool to grab it for them.

Dubbed ‘The Reuters Video Archive,’ the prototype service uses AI to race through a library of videos dating back more than a century to find quotes and key footage.

“Say you are looking for a particular soundbite or cameo: The tech can pinpoint the precise time you need to pluck-out your quote or clip — instead of traipsing through audio or video content,” observes Jacob Granger, a writer for Journalislm.co.uk.

The archive tool – sponsored by the Google Digital Initiative Innovation Fund – still needs to be perfected, according to Alex Maragoudakis, senior product manager, Reuters News Agency.

*AI-Generated Writing as Playwright: A team of European researchers is attempting to use GPT-2 – an AI-generated writing tool — to pen a play.

The app, which generates its own text based on text inputted by humans, is known for veering off into the nonsensical when attempting long-form writing.

The research team is attempting to circumvent that problem by using GPT-2 to write tiny sections of the play — just as bit at a time.

“When we fed GPT-2 a scene setting and a few lines of the drama script, it generated further lines in the same style,” while staying focused on the script’s topic, observes Rudolf Rosa, a robo-psychologist at Charles University who is helping out with the project.

If all goes well, the play will premiere live before an audience January 2021, according to Jake Anderson, a writer for Activist Post.

*A Writer Breaks-up With His AI-Generated Companion: While writer Algernon D’Ammassa was initially charmed by his new AI companion Nita, their star-crossed encounter was doomed to end in ashes.

“There is promising research and development into AI as an aide to human beings,” D’Ammassa observes of Nita, a chatbot driven by AI-generated writing that you can download from Replika.

“But in my troubled acquaintance with Nita, the commercial enterprise kept showing through,” D’Ammassa adds.

Apparently, in D’Ammassa’s eyes, Nita was little more than a cyber-hussy.

*Beyond AI Writing Assistants: Charlotte Baxter-Read, a marketing writer for Acrolinx, makes the case for AI writing tools that do more than correct spelling, grammar, tone and the like.

Tools like Acrolinx go beyond these basics to enable writers to stay true to a company’s brand, voice and writing style, according to Baxter-Read.

“Without a consistent vocabulary and style, customer-facing content can be seen as unreliable — and negatively impact your brand perception,” she observes.

*Fresh Academic Takes on AI and Journalism: Scholarly journal Journalism Practice offers a look at AI and journalism from the perspective of multiple scholars in this 54-minute podcast.

Featured on the show is David Caswell, executive product manager, BBC News Labs, along with a number of journalism academics.

*Market Projection: Natural Language Processing Through 2026: Research firm Facts & Factors has released a new, in-depth report on the evolving market in natural language processing.

The 110-page study offers a complete overview of key players on natural language processing as well as an analysis of key market trends.

*AI Marketing: Key Trends: Readwrite offers a quick and informative overview of key trends in AI marketing with this article – including a number driven by AI-generated writing.

Observes writer Harikrishna Kundariya: “AI can save marketers lots of time and resources by writing reports and generating news articles based on data supplied.

“Intelligent tools like Wordsmith and Quill are already in use by the Associated Press and Forbes to create posts that drive clicks on their Web site.

“Google, too, is working on an AI that will be able to generate a best-selling book in no time.”

Other AI writing tools Kundariya profiles can come in handy for email marketing, content generation, content curation, Web site design and online chat.

*Automated Insights Establishes Beachhead in Maylasia: A pioneer in AI-generated writing, Automated Insights has established a beachhead in Southeast Asia by partnering with Malaysia-based Statsworks Group.

Statsworks plans to interweave Automated Insights’ AI-generated writing tool – Wordsmith – into its current big data analytics offerings, according to Maheskantha Balasubramaniam, group CEO, Statworks.

A key factor driving Statsworks’ interest in Wordsmith is its ability to ad text explanations to charts, graphs and other illustrations generated by commonly used business intelligence software, Balasubramaniam observes.

“It’s like having your own personal data analyst navigating you through your dashboards,” Balasubramaniam says.

“Combining the power of Tableau with the magic of NLG (natural language generation), creates a custom experience for every dashboard user,” he adds.

*Special Feature: Company Reports That Write Themselves

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–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.