A number of of probably the most outstanding alt-weekly newspapers in the USA are working search-engine-optimized listicles about porn performers, which seem like AI-generated, alongside their editorial content material.
In case you pull up the homepage for the Village Voice in your cellphone, for instance, you’ll see reporting from freelancers—longtime columnist Michael Musto nonetheless recordsdata sometimes—in addition to archival work from big-name former writers like Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Greg Tate. You’ll additionally see a tab on its drop-down menu labeled “OnlyFans.” Clicking on it pulls up a catalog of listicles rating several types of pornographic performers by demographic, from “Turkish” to “incest” to “granny.” These weblog posts hyperlink out to a whole lot of various OnlyFans accounts and are introduced as editorial work, with out labels indicating that they’re commercials or sponsored.
Related content material seems on the web sites of LA Weekly, which is owned by Road Media, the identical guardian firm because the Village Voice, in addition to the St. Louis-based alt-weekly the Riverfront Occasions. Though there’s a probability a few of these posts may very well be written by human freelancers, the writing bears markers of AI slop.
In response to AI detection startup Actuality Defender, which scanned a sampling of those posts, the content material within the articles registers as having a “excessive chance” of containing AI-generated textual content. One scanned instance, a Riverfront Occasions story titled “19 Greatest Free Asian OnlyFans That includes OnlyFans Asian Free in 2024,” concludes with the next sentence, exemplary in its generic attractive platitudes: “You discover, savor, and uncover your subsequent favourite dependancy, and we’ll be again with extra insane expertise sooner or later!”
“We’re seeing an ever-increasing a part of previous media be reborn as AI-generated new media,” says Actuality Defender co-founder and CTO Ali Shahriyari. “Sadly, this implies method much less informational and newsworthy content material and extra Search engine optimization-focused ‘slop’ that actually simply wastes individuals’s time and a spotlight. Monitoring these sorts of publications isn’t even a part of our day after day, but we’re seeing them pop up increasingly.”
LA Weekly laid off or provided buyouts to the vast majority of its employees in March 2024, whereas the Riverfront Occasions laid off its total employees in Might 2024 after it was offered by guardian firm Huge Lou Media to an unnamed purchaser.
The Village Voice’s sole remaining editorial staffer, R.C. Baker, says he isn’t concerned with the OnlyFans posts, though it seems on the positioning as editorial content material. “I deal with solely information and cultural reporting out of New York Metropolis. I’ve nothing to do with OnlyFans. That content material is dealt with by a separate group that’s based mostly, I consider, in LA,” he advised WIRED.
Likewise, former LA Weekly editor-in-chief Darrick Rainey says he, too, had nothing to do with the OnlyFans listicles when he labored there, nor have been his colleagues in editorial. “We weren’t glad about it in any respect, and we have been completely not concerned in placing it up,” he says.
Former staff are disturbed to see their archival work comingling with Search engine optimization porn slop. “It’s wrenching in so some ways,” says former Riverfront Occasions author Danny Wicentowski. “Like watching a liked residence get devoured by vines, or left to rot.”
