Today's Latest Stories - Or How Vocal is Losing the AI War
This picture is worth a 100,000 AI-generated words
Does anyone else have a problem with the picture above?
I do.
(I also have some solutions... I'll get to those later.)
Since Vocal introduced the ability to flag AI-generated content a couple of months ago, I thought I'd do a random check to see how many authors are actually flagging their AI-generated work – and how many are not.
The picture above speaks for itself. None of the articles I've highlighted as AI content are flagged as such. I used the tool at https://www.scribbr.co.uk/ai-detector/ to check each article.
Clearly Vocal is not doing any proactive AI detection themselves. In fact, since 'AI content' has been added to the 'Report' function, it seems like Vocal is pushing the problem of policing AI content down the line to its users.
(Vocal also doesn't even do a cursory web search to check for plagiarised content. This isn't an AI problem. This is as old as the internet.)
So what does our $10 for Vocal+ pay for?
I suppose the cost of servers and bandwidth must be rocketing when the website is exploding with a tsunami of AI-generated, plagiarised, spam and barely-concealed commercial content.
But I would rather it was spent on achieving Vocal's primary goals, as described in its mission statement:
Vocal is a platform for supporting, discovering and rewarding creators...
... [where] all types of creatives can get discovered and fund their creativity.
I want Vocal to spend money on supporting human creators, spreading ideas that come from human brains, and helping those humans connect with other humans who respond emotionally and authentically.
I believe that this tidal wave of AI generated content is fundamentally undermining both goals. It drowns out human creators. It fills comments threads with generic and irrelevant fluff. It wastes the time and attention of valuable human readers.
I have some suggestions that Vocal could adopt:
None of these suggestions will solve the problem, but they're at least the beginning of a solution.
I'd love to know how Vocal is planning to combat the AI issue. The most recent update clearly made no difference. If this is the best that Vocal can come up with, perhaps that's an even bigger problem than the AI.
Thanks for reading!
About the Creator
Addison Alder
Writer of Wrongs. Discontent Creator. Editor of The Gristle.
100% organic fiction 👋🏻 hand-wrought in London, UK 🇬🇧
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Comments (5)
This is an interesting article. It looks like the same accounts are posting incessantly, and now and then, you see a different name. It makes me wonder how many creatives use this site. If it's just the handful I see, I wonder if earning from exclusive content is possible.
What an enlightening, and depressing, piece. Your suggestions are excellent. One can "hope" I suppose that Vocal will do something to stem the proliferation of the dreck!
Great article and great suggestions. I'm going to subscribe so I can see more of your work
You may or may not know that unattributed Ai is an issue for me. Your suggestions are helpful and if some were implemented it would be a relief. If you are interested, I have an article on my profile that is an aggregate of all of the AI-busting-themed posts that I've made.
You make so many great points and yes. I used to like going to Latest Stories to try and find some new creators to read and follow, but now it's just a mire of AI and just spammy rubbish. And you're right, there are easy fixes, that could be implemented a big quicker than they are being. Thank you for writing this and just shining a light on it.