[protortyp]

I doubt that the dogshit is so much worse than it used to be. Unfortunately, I also contributed to this. When I was 13 or 14, I scripted a little tool that allowed me to write one tech news blog post and generate multiple versions of it by simply swapping phrases, adding practically zero value. You'd be surprised (or not) how much of a tech news blog is repetitive wording, mainly to fill yet one more adsense banner after a new paragraph. It was not based on AI, but the core principle was the same as the example in the article.

I published each version on a separate WordPress blog covering roughly the same topic, chose random pictures, set random publish dates close to each other, and signed them all up for Google News. This non-AI dogshit dominated a small tech niche, making a decent amount of money at the time for a 14-year-old. I am pretty sure I was not the only one coming up with that idea at the time.

[rightbyte]

Interesting. How long ago was this? It is obvious it happens now alot, but at what time did you think it started?

[protortyp]

This was already back in 2008/2009. At the time, I posted about my approach in online forums to ask for coding advice. Through those, I got to meet the creators of two more organizations that used a similar approach for PC gaming news pages.

And this was for the German market only. So I am quite sure that it was more common in the US at an earlier time, as they are usually ahead of us.