I guess as a threshold question, we have to ask: Is AI slop any worse than the leftwing human slop that “journalists” spit out? After all, they just “write” their articles straight from DNC press releases.
A suspicious pitch from a freelancer led editor Nicholas Hune-Brown to dig into their past work. By the end, four publications, including The Guardian and Dwell, had removed articles from their sites.
The writer, Victoria Goldiee, introduced herself as having written for The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, and Maisonneuve–Canadian outlets that publish the same kind of feature writing we do.
…
When I googled her, I saw that Victoria had written stories for a set of publications that collectively painted the picture of an ambitious young freelancer on the rise–short pieces in prestigious outlets like The Cut and The Guardian, lifestyle features in titles like Architectural Digest and Dwell, and in-depth reporting in non-profit and industry publications like Outrider and the Journal of the Law Society of Scotland. Her headshot was of a youthful Black woman. She was, according to her author bio, “a writer with a keen focus on sharing the untold stories of underrepresented communities in the media.”
At the next editorial story meeting, we decided to take a shot on Victoria and assign the story. Then I began looking more closely at her work.
There were some red flags. The first question I had was whether she was actually in Toronto when so many of her bylines were in New York magazines and British newspapers. And how had she managed to do so many interviews already? Doing so much reporting without the guarantee of pay felt like a big gamble.
When I googled “Victoria Goldiee” with the names of the Canadian publications she said she’d written for, there were no results. We reached out to Danielle Martin, one of the doctors Victoria claimed she’d interviewed. Martin said she’d never heard of her.
I emailed Victoria back: “Are those quotes from your own interviews? And do you mind sending along some clippings, perhaps from your Walrus or Maisonneuve stories?”
She sent a lengthy reply the next day. “The quotes I included in the pitch are from original interviews I’ve conducted over the past few weeks,” she insisted. “In terms of previous work, I write a regular newsletter for The Walrus, which gives a good sense of my ability to balance accessibility with depth while speaking to a broad audience.” She attached a link to The Walrus’s “Lab Insider” newsletter that did not have her byline.
“I can 100% confirm that they do not write the Lab Insider newsletter,” wrote Tracie Jones from The Walrus when I emailed. “How odd to say they do!”
Victoria’s stilted email, and a closer read of the original pitch, revealed what should have been clear from the start: with its rote phrasing (“This story matters because of… It is timely because of… It fits your readership because of…”), it had all the hallmarks of an AI-generated piece of writing.
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