Wired Retracts Article By 'AI Freelancer' - and Business Insider Retracts 38 (msn.com) 37
"A raft of articles have been retracted from publications including Business Insider and Wired in recent month," reports the Washington Post, "with links between them suggesting a possible broader scheme to pass off fake stories that these outlets now suspect were written using artificial intelligence."
A Washington Post probe into the retractions found a connection between Onyeka Nwelue, the purported author of one of 38 essays removed this week by Business Insider, and someone using the name Margaux Blanchard, two of whose stories were previously removed by the same outlet. In recent months SFGate, Index on Censorship and Wired also retracted articles under the Blanchard byline, after it was identified as bogus by the British publication Press Gazette...
Business Insider Editor in Chief Jamie Heller explained to staff Tuesday in an email, obtained by The Post, that the report of a phony writer spurred a fuller investigation that turned up dozens of suspicious articles under various bylines. "We recently learned that a freelance contributor misrepresented their identity in two first-person essays written for Business Insider. As soon as this came to light, we took down the essays and began an investigation," Heller said. "As part of this process, we've removed additional first-person essays from the site due to concerns about the authors' identity or veracity. No news articles or videos were found to have this issue." On Tuesday Business Insider removed 38 pieces that had been published under bylines other than Blanchard. Business Insider deleted the author pages of 19 individuals, including Blanchard and Nwelue, and replaced their essays with editor's notes.
The website's investigation involved reviewing "tens of thousands of records," Business Insider spokesperson Ari Isaacman D'Angelo said in a statement to The Post. But it hadn't determined whether artificial intelligence was used to produce the yanked essays, she said, noting that AI-detection tools are often unreliable... Essays under [Nate] Giovanni's byline feature contradictory information. One piece, published in December 2024, refers to the author having two teenage daughters and a two-and-a-half-year-old son. Another, published three months later mentions two sons, aged eight and nine. Pieces that ran in May and July — about house-sitting around the world and applying to PhD programs — make no mention of a family at all...
On Aug. 21, Wired wrote a longer mea culpa about the article it published under Blanchard's name, with the headline "How WIRED Got Rolled by an AI Freelancer." "If anyone should be able to catch an AI scammer, it's WIRED," the publication wrote. ["In fact we do, all the time. Our editors receive transparently AI-generated pitches on a regular basis, and we reject them accordingly..."] "Unfortunately, one got through," referring to a story that ran under Blanchard's byline in May about two people who were married in the video game Minecraft.
The site Index on Censorship also published an article under the Blanchard byline about threats to journalists in Guatemala. "In the age of very intelligent AI it's clear we will have to look at things differently," the site's editor told the Washington Post.
The Post's article notes that one sign the pitches were AI-generated "is that while they sounded interesting, they featured details that were erroneous — including fictitious locales." Reached for a comment, one of the authors told the Post "Don't mention my name in your stupid article," claiming their acocunt was recently "compromised" (though their X.com account had also recently tweeted one of their articles.) But another author emailed the Post from their actual academic email address, saying they had no connection to the Gmail account The Post had been corresponding with. And here's how the person at that Gmail account responded to a follow-up query from the Post.
"What is one to do? With a few savvy prompts, AI could probably generate a 'long-lost' novel by Proust."
Business Insider Editor in Chief Jamie Heller explained to staff Tuesday in an email, obtained by The Post, that the report of a phony writer spurred a fuller investigation that turned up dozens of suspicious articles under various bylines. "We recently learned that a freelance contributor misrepresented their identity in two first-person essays written for Business Insider. As soon as this came to light, we took down the essays and began an investigation," Heller said. "As part of this process, we've removed additional first-person essays from the site due to concerns about the authors' identity or veracity. No news articles or videos were found to have this issue." On Tuesday Business Insider removed 38 pieces that had been published under bylines other than Blanchard. Business Insider deleted the author pages of 19 individuals, including Blanchard and Nwelue, and replaced their essays with editor's notes.
The website's investigation involved reviewing "tens of thousands of records," Business Insider spokesperson Ari Isaacman D'Angelo said in a statement to The Post. But it hadn't determined whether artificial intelligence was used to produce the yanked essays, she said, noting that AI-detection tools are often unreliable... Essays under [Nate] Giovanni's byline feature contradictory information. One piece, published in December 2024, refers to the author having two teenage daughters and a two-and-a-half-year-old son. Another, published three months later mentions two sons, aged eight and nine. Pieces that ran in May and July — about house-sitting around the world and applying to PhD programs — make no mention of a family at all...
On Aug. 21, Wired wrote a longer mea culpa about the article it published under Blanchard's name, with the headline "How WIRED Got Rolled by an AI Freelancer." "If anyone should be able to catch an AI scammer, it's WIRED," the publication wrote. ["In fact we do, all the time. Our editors receive transparently AI-generated pitches on a regular basis, and we reject them accordingly..."] "Unfortunately, one got through," referring to a story that ran under Blanchard's byline in May about two people who were married in the video game Minecraft.
The site Index on Censorship also published an article under the Blanchard byline about threats to journalists in Guatemala. "In the age of very intelligent AI it's clear we will have to look at things differently," the site's editor told the Washington Post.
The Post's article notes that one sign the pitches were AI-generated "is that while they sounded interesting, they featured details that were erroneous — including fictitious locales." Reached for a comment, one of the authors told the Post "Don't mention my name in your stupid article," claiming their acocunt was recently "compromised" (though their X.com account had also recently tweeted one of their articles.) But another author emailed the Post from their actual academic email address, saying they had no connection to the Gmail account The Post had been corresponding with. And here's how the person at that Gmail account responded to a follow-up query from the Post.
"What is one to do? With a few savvy prompts, AI could probably generate a 'long-lost' novel by Proust."
As a WIRED subscriber, I have disappoint (Score:3)
As a paid WIRED subscriber, I have disappoint.
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As a Wired subscriber, aren't you complicit?
Re: As a WIRED subscriber, I have disappoint (Score:1)
Subscribers don't approve articles.
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As a paid WIRED subscriber, I have disappoint.
I might expect your response from Pottery Pros Quarterly, but your complaints fall on Vulcan ears at WIRED. Go figure.
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WIRED and business insider have both gotten AWFUL.
If you're gonna pay for anything, pay for Kagi so you can block both of them and every other zombie journal brand bouncing around out there publishing AI slop and advertisments.
Wired has always been nerd junk-food though. Some gems, some stupid, all of it interesting, and none of it actually technical.
You can pretty much discount any nerd media by it's relative proximity to Cory Doctorow and Xenia Jarden and Cory was practically hatched by the gaggle of goo
Retractions and appoligies (Score:2)
Any link to front-page "We're sorry and retracted the articles" from Wired and Business Insider?
Any apologies to retract the political undertones, victim narratives and other agenda pushing done in the retracted articles?
Did Google de-rank those sites based on the AI slop?
All their editor positions must be AI also. (Score:3)
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Otherwise, who read the articles and did the editorial review before they were published!
In the era of third-party digital publishers, what exactly is an editor and how fast are they expected to edit? And to whose standards?
Editing, implies a cutting room floor exists somewhere that isn’t spotless due to dogshit “censorship” excuses that make everything fit to print.
It should have been obvious (Score:2)
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You sound awfully racist against French Canadian women, just sayin'.
Re:It should have been obvious (Score:4, Interesting)
That's exactly the point. The fake names used were intentionally chosen to not fit the "white old man" template, because anyone questioning these two identities would "obviously be driven by rabid misogyny and unmitigated racism". These fraudsters knew well, how to play that fiddle.
We can point fingers at Wired for this all day long, but unlike other news papers they at least fessed up to it.
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How about Dick Trickle, Joey Buttafuoco, or Dick Butkus?
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Or Elon Musk, FFS
Wired is AI Slop (Score:2)
That being said...feel free to take a moment to head to Reddit and see what Wired is posting. If you believe it's a disruptive use of AI, which I'm sure it will be, maybe you'll feel like taking the time to report it.
The internet is an environment and spam is pollution. Let's fi
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Wired is AI Slop. Over on Reddit they have a chatbot spamming their articles on every sub and posting comments. It's all slop. Of course they can't get banned because Wired and Reddit both have the same parent company, Conde Naste. That being said...feel free to take a moment to head to Reddit and see what Wired is posting. If you believe it's a disruptive use of AI, which I'm sure it will be, maybe you'll feel like taking the time to report it. The internet is an environment and spam is pollution. Let's fight some polluters.
98% of all email is spam. You wouldn’t be able to even call it a tool today without massive filters, which barely work.
We haven’t fought a fucking thing in the environment that is the internet and won. It was the Wild West when it started, and now it’s just a survellience state. With zero real jurisdiction. You aren’t winning anything. You’re finding ways to survive. Barely.
AI would impersonate your loved one and convince you they’re in grave danger, just to pull of
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AI would impersonate your loved one and convince you they’re in grave danger, just to pull off the same Nigerian Prince scam viewed as lame today. The difference is AI will be a hell of a lot more successful. ..
Good point I never thought about this specifically. 419 scams were transparently retarded and yet they worked well until they became a meme. LLMs, even fairly small ones can write better than your typical 419 scammer and that shit will come in from all directions, constantly, and not just through email. You could have one of these smaller LLMs running on just about anything that has decent bandwith to enough memory and I figure you'll see shitty AI SoCs doing this soon enough, they don't need to be fast,
Wired has a wokebot? (Score:2)
I subscribed to Wired from the very first issue until early this year. It was a great publication when Louis Rossetto was in charge, publishing articles about new tech with an overall attitude of "critical optimism." In recent years I lost interest as it slid into woeness. So now we know why.
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In recent years I lost interest as it slid into woeness. So now we know why.
Yea, that whole "Oh woe is me, my world is changing and I don't like it" attitude gets old.
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Yeah why dislike reading someone else's ChatGPT 5.0 conversation you could have just had yourself?
What to do? (Score:2)
It's pretty easy to fix this. Invite the (human) author into the Wired office, sit them down and quiz them about the story for 45 minutes. If they pass muster, accept the story for publication.
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Who's going to buy the airline ticket? I doubt that Wired pays enough that an author would be willing to do so.
Readers Digest (Score:2)
I've been paying attention to the authors on blogs and their linkedins and other social media for I dunno... probably from 2013 to 2023 when I just couldn't stomach reading much news anymore.
There is a serious decline and the impression i get is that low-end filler articles, even for a lot of journo brands I trusted and read for decades is:
Barely employed hipster with a Masters in On Time Essay Studies grinds and hustles, their big break of the week is a deal with CNN.com, puts in C+/B- effort to produce an
I predict (Score:3)
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You've got the wrong tense. It's already the new scapegoat. Sometimes accurately.
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Outsourcing to AI providers and then throwing them under the bus.
So? (Score:3)
I don't have a problem with AI-generated essays as long as they are interesting and provide real citations for any facts they purport are facts, and are labelled as AI-generated, just like any other byline.