Popular tech site CNET reportedly employing AI to write full-fledged articles

With the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November 2022, many thought that it was only a matter of time before AI-generated articles flood the Search Engine Result Pages (SERP). Google maintains that content produced using machine learning tools is categorized as spam which, in theory, is penalized by the search giant. As it turns out, CNET, one of the biggest tech media sites in the world, has been publishing articles generated with AI since November 2022.

According to Gael Breton of Authority Hacker, CNET has been putting up articles written with AI since November 11, 2022. To date, the site has 72 such pieces. While CNET does disclose under each piece that the article was written using “automation technology”, it is not immediately clear, as the byline only mentions “Written by CNET Money”. It is only after clicking on the byline that you are presented with the disclaimer that the content was generated with an AI engine.

What’s more concerning, however, is that the articles are pulling in quite a bit of traffic per Gael Breton’s research. Auto-generated articles pulling in traffic is in direct contrast to Google’s claims of penalizing AI content.

Now the question becomes: Is Google able to effectively distinguish between human-generated and AI-generated writing? Sadly, we have no clear answer. Talking to Search Engine Journal, Google’s Search Advocate John Mueller explained that, although the company can’t claim to have the ability to automatically detect AI written pieces, “if we see that something is automatically generated, then the webspam team can definitely take action on that”.

Finally, neither CNET nor Google answered any question posed to them by Futurism regarding the issue.

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