AI Rewrites Press Releases, Calls It News

A growing number news sites have decided to bypass reporters completely and simply go live with whatever they happen to find in a press release — courtesy of an AI-rewrite.

Writer Bron Maher reports that the tool they’re using is Gutenbot, by Reach.

Granted, editors at the news outlets using the AI are supposedly tasked to double-check the press release rewrites to ensure the data and claims spewed in the press release are faithfully re-spewed in the AI rewrite.

But apparently, there are no links to the original source material — agency written press releases that are often riddled with euphemisms, unfounded, blue-sky promises and similar unbridled marketing-speak.

Instead, the AI-regurgitated press release receives the tarnished imprimatur of the publishing news outlet — which packages the piece as hard news.

In other AI-generated writing news and analysis:

*In-Depth Guide: Shoot-Out: ChatGPT and Three Top AI Chatbots Go Head-to-Head: Julian Horsey has put together his take on four of the most high-profile AI writing-tools-and-more on the market today.

His take-away:

~ChatGPT is the most versatile

~Claude is best for document-heavy tasks

~Grok targets social media fans

~Gemini outdoes the others in search

*Google’s AI-Powered Woke Imaging Flunks History: Google’s AI imaging tool has been caught red-handed auto-generating nonsensical, woke renditions of historical figures — prompting the tech titan to put a hold on the tool’s people imaging feature.

Samples of the tool’s over-the-top woke lens included Asians portrayed as Nazi soldiers, Vikings imaged as black — and the pope rendered as an Indian woman.

Google’s excuse, according to CEO Sundar Pichai: “No AI is perfect — especially at this emerging stage of the industry’s development.”

Right.

*Tweaking ChatGPT’s New Memory Feature: For When You’ve Shared Too Much: Businesses wary of ChatGPT’s new memory feature — which ‘remembers’ much of your Q&A with the AI chatbot — can breathe easy.

Turns-out, you can turn-off memory in ChatGPT anytime you’d like by clicking ‘Settings,’ then ‘Personalization,” then ‘Memory.’

OpenAI recently added the memory feature to enable the AI writer-and-more to ‘get-to-know-you-better’ over time — and ideally, provide you with answers more precisely tuned to what you’re looking for.

But some businesses prefer keeping ChatGPT at arm’s length to ensure no proprietary data gets left behind.

*AI Writing Pioneer Rolls-Out ‘Write in Your Voice’ Option: Add AI writer Anyword to the growing list of AI tools promising to write in your voice.

Observes Yaniv Makover, CEO, Anyword: “With our latest innovation, you can now upload all your previous blogs, enabling Anyword to train a custom model specifically attuned to your unique tone of voice.

“This means every piece of content generated will sound just like you wrote it, maintaining the authenticity and resonance your audience loves.”

One caution: Double-check on the actual performance of the new ‘write-in-your-voice’ feature before parting with hard cash.

Many AI writers promising to write just like you actually end up writing ‘sort of’ like you.

*Newsrooms Embrace the Singularity: Swapping Notebooks for AI: Knowinsiders has released its list of the top ten AI tools for journalists.

Among the most interesting:

~JECT.AI, an AI researching tool for journalists

~Vetted, an AI tool that helps journalists pinpoint certified sources for news stories

~Murf, an AI tool that auto-generates voice-overs for news stories

*Adobe’s New AI Assitant: The ChatGPT Cousin for .PDFs We Never Knew We Needed: Chances are you’ll soon be able to auto-generate summaries of a .PDF — as well ask questions of the document — if a new in-development tool from Adobe passes muster.

Dubbed ‘AI Assistant’ and released in beta mode, the tool also reformats info you find in .PDFs as emails, reports and presentations.

Observes Abhigyan Modi, a senior vice president at Adobe: “.PDF is the de facto standard for the world’s most important documents.

“The capabilities introduced today are just the beginning of the value AI Assistant will deliver through (Adobe) Reader and Acrobat.”

*Junk News Sites Powered by AI Continue to Multiply: More than 700 sites on the Web are churning-out low quality — or just plain false — ‘news’ generated by AI writers, according to media watchdog NewsGuard.

Observes Jack Brewster, enterprise editor, NewsGuard: “These are Web sites that are using artificial intelligence to sometimes generate content in mass (amounts) and it does not appear as content and it does not appear as though they have human editorial oversight.

“They are masquerading as news sites and act as advertising click-bait.”

*AI-Generated College Essays: Recipe for a Brainless Generation?: Students hoping to take a free ride on AI writing tools throughout their educational careers are headed for intellectually diminished lives, according to two university professors.

The reason: Without proficiency in original writing, most students will never learn how to think more clearly, more precisely or more deeply.

“In writing courses, students can begin to see the critical variety and power of one of our best technologies: The human act of writing, a system of finite resources but infinite combinations.

“They learn to think, synthesize, judge the credibility of sources and information and interact with an audience — none of which can be done by AI,” observe university professors Joel Heng Hartse and Taylor Morphett.

*AI Big Picture: Still Writing Like It’s 1999?: AI Could Make Your Business Toast: A new Harris poll finds that ChatGPT and similar AI tools promise to bring mind-boggling new productivity to businesses.

Observes Matt Rosenberg, a department head at Grammarly, an AI writing, editing and proofreading tool: “Companies not using generative AI for communication are already way behind.

“And those that are, are far from realizing its full potential.

“The data is clear that generative AI offers monumental benefits.”

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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.