Author: Kate Knibbs

AI-generated writing is now all over the internet. The introduction of automated prose can sometimes change a website’s character, like when once beloved publications get purchased and overhauled into AI content mills. Other times, however, it’s harder to argue that AI really changed anything. For example, look at LinkedIn. The Microsoft-owned social media site for

Lawsuits are never exactly a lovefest, but the copyright fight between The New York Times and both OpenAI and Microsoft is getting especially contentious. This week, the Times alleged that OpenAI’s engineers inadvertently erased data the paper’s team spent more than 150 hours extracting as potential evidence. OpenAI was able to recover much of the

The most popular writers on Substack earn up to seven figures each year primarily by persuading readers to pay for their work. The newsletter platform’s subscription-driven business model offers creators different incentives than platforms like Facebook or YouTube, where traffic and engagement are king. In theory, that should help shield Substack from the wave of

OpenAI has notched a victory in its ongoing legal fight against publishers over how its AI tools use creative work. On November 7, a judge dismissed a copyright case against the startup brought by independent publishers Alternet and Raw Story. While several publishers have lined up content deals with OpenAI—including WIRED parent company Condé Nast—dozens

This Halloween, crowds lined the streets in central Dublin and waited for a parade to begin. They’d gathered after a website called MySpiritHalloween.com published an AI-generated article promoting the festivities. The post promised “spectacular floats to thrilling street performances” and described the route in detail. The parade never came—but the spectacle of throngs of people

AI slop is flowing onto every major platform where people post online—and Medium is no exception. The 12-year-old publishing platform has undertaken a dizzying number of pivots over the years. It’s finally on a financial upswing, having turned a monthly profit for the first time this summer. Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine and other executives at

A new lawsuit brought against the startup Perplexity argues that, in addition to violating copyright law, it’s breaking trademark law by making up fake sections of news stories and falsely attributing the words to publishers. Dow Jones (publisher of The Wall Street Journal) and the New York Post—both owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp—brought the

It’s too soon to say how the spate of deals between AI companies and publishers will shake out. OpenAI has already scored one clear win, though: Its web crawlers aren’t getting blocked by top news outlets at the rate they once were. The generative AI boom sparked a gold rush for data—and a subsequent data-protection

So far, when AI companies have trained on YouTube’s invaluable stash of videos, captions, and other content, they’ve done so without permission. An AI-focused content licensing startup called Calliope Networks is hoping to change that with its new “License to Scrape,” a program aimed directly at YouTube stars. “There’s obvious demand from AI companies to

Internet infrastructure firm Cloudflare is launching a suite of tools that could help shift the power dynamic between AI companies and the websites they crawl for data. Today it’s giving all of its customers—including the estimated 33 million using its free services—the ability to monitor and selectively block AI data-scraping bots. That preventative measure comes