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Found out my own town's local news was written by AI for 6 months
I was scrolling through our town's local news site last night, the one that covers city council meetings and high school sports. Something felt off about the writing, like it was too perfect and used the same phrases over and over. So I did a quick search on some of the sentences and they turned up on these generic content farms. Then I checked the 'about us' page and realized the whole thing was run by a company that sells AI-generated news to small towns. It covered 47 stories about zoning laws and bake sales that all sounded exactly the same. Made me wonder how many other local sites are just bots pretending to be reporters. Has anyone else caught their own town's news being fake like this?
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the_jake8d ago
Is it really that big of a deal though? I mean, half the time local news is just reciting council minutes and listing upcoming events, stuff that's basically just filling a website. As long as the facts are right and the dates are correct, who really cares if a robot wrote it?
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phoenixk647d agoMost Upvoted
Honestly, a bot can't ask follow-up questions or catch a lie in those boring council minutes.
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wendy_lee488d ago
Hang on @the_jake, what about the people whose jobs those are? If a robot covers the boring stuff, do the laid-off reporters come back for the fun stories, or is it just cheaper to have the bot do everything?
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