alt.hn

7/2/2026 at 12:40:36 PM

AI fake news complaining about how AI fake news is the death of real news

 https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/07/now-were-getting-ai-fake-news-complaining-about-how-ai-fake-news-is-the-death-of-real-news/

by thm

7/2/2026 at 1:32:23 PM

This is a great read.

It would appear https://theeditorial.news is "Under Construction" now. The articles themselves [1] were originally super creepy when you know the entire thing is made up.

> Michelle Quaid is fifty-two years old, the mother of two grown children, and she began working at the Commercial-News in 1999

> Quaid wore a polo shirt with the paper's logo — a stylized 'C' — over her heart.

She's not real! None of it is! Truly bizarre and unnerving. I'd love if we got a follow-up, eventually.

Why only rural newspapers and South China Sea?

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20260629011021/https://theeditor...

by joenot443

7/2/2026 at 1:41:27 PM

The article from archive you link.. scores as mostly human on GPTZero (I tested a random paragraph). That's the issue I've always seen with AI detectors, they might be able to detect direct LLM output, but if you give an article to an AI and tell it write something made up using that format and make it appear like a real story, the detectors will think its real.

by yousif_123123

7/2/2026 at 7:56:15 PM

Yeah that's the weird thing with GPTZero... It claims "99% accuracy" when, IIUC, that actually means "99% of the time we won't incorrectly flag a human written post as AI."

It's an extremely easy fence to jump over, as demonstrated by the article.

by joenot443

7/2/2026 at 1:48:31 PM

You think that's unnerving? Just wait until the mid-terms get fully under motion, nothing is going to compare to the amount of perfect looking BS that will be spread by both parties.

And yes, I said both.

Cambridge Analytics is going to seem like a child's toy compared to how targeted, how sophisticated this will be. Why have 20 or 30 stories tailored to specific groups of humans, when you can have stories rendered on the fly for individuals, targetting all their greatest fears and folly.

I can imagine someone's loved one dying of cancer a month before the election, and both sides using targetted stuff claiming that the other guy actually caused the cancer somehow.

If there's one thing I've seen in my life, is that there's no such concept as "too low" or "too scummy" for politicians.

CA was accused to literally causing three civil wars in third world nations. I often wonder, will the US have the honour of being the first in the West to fall apart due to misinformation?

I really liked some scifi book I read, where the person appointed to be president for 4 years, was determined to hate the very idea of having the job. Didn't want it. Yet was also very driven.

by b112

7/2/2026 at 8:03:16 PM

> Why have 20 or 30 stories tailored to specific groups of humans, when you can have stories rendered on the fly for individuals, targetting all their greatest fears and folly.

I think it's easy to overestimate how much the average voter is seeking out these weird articles. Obviously as nerds on HN they're enjoyable to pick apart, but in the grand scheme of the American electorate, I'd wager this sort of AI fake news makes a pretty negligible difference.

> I can imagine someone's loved one dying of cancer a month before the election, and both sides using targetted stuff claiming that the other guy actually caused the cancer somehow.

I think that's a bit of a stretch.

> I really liked some scifi book I read, where the person appointed to be president for 4 years, was determined to hate the very idea of having the job. Didn't want it. Yet was also very driven.

That sounds interesting, what's it called?

by joenot443

7/2/2026 at 2:46:40 PM

Both sides! Both sides!

by b40d-48b2-979e

7/2/2026 at 5:35:39 PM

Emails! Butter emails!

by vitally3643

7/2/2026 at 6:06:32 PM

Also known as buttery males. Which all seems so quaint now.

by amanaplanacanal

7/2/2026 at 1:55:39 PM

I constantly wonder what is the societal benefits of AI

It’s really hard to build a coherent pro-AI argument

by spaceman_2020

7/2/2026 at 2:08:56 PM

AI is great at producing low value content. That low value content replaces the high value but high cost one.

That is horrifying and destroys jobs, removes expertise from the world, and makes our lives worse.

I do not see how AI could be a net positive either.

by Frieren

7/2/2026 at 5:01:38 PM

Wait, there's a law that says exactly that about money! Bad money always drives out good money (because the good money gets hoarded). AI as fake money, a funny coincidence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law

by throw-the-towel

7/2/2026 at 2:42:20 PM

You can at the local level.

I thought this piece was realistic and hopeful:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/06/ai-open-ai-anthrop...

I can't control how the world uses AI, but my family and friends have been using it to start new businesses, finally resolve some long-term medical mysteries, and plan trips they wouldn't have otherwise.

by randusername

7/2/2026 at 2:47:48 PM 

    finally resolve some long-term medical mysteries
It's called "go to a doctor".

by b40d-48b2-979e

7/2/2026 at 3:22:58 PM

Easier said than done. Not easy to access or pay for specialists in the US and they don't always communicate with each other well to coordinate care, especially for non life-threatening issues.

I live in an area with three world-class hospitals, still had to wait 16 months to follow-up with a hematologist about bloodwork.

If we aren't going to fix overregulation, undersupply, and insurance, AI is the best the bottom 80% can do for a lot of medical queries too complex for the time and attention they are allotted with the doctor. I see that as a positive.

by randusername

7/2/2026 at 4:15:14 PM

How can the AI solve a medical mystery?

I suppose if it says something like "Eat more broccoli" and the suggestion works you can assume the answer is accurate.

But for me it's more likely to say "maybe you have xxxx" and I would still need to see a specialist to do tests like colonoscopies to know?

I suffer from one condition with no cure and little literature and every once in a while I've seen on a related subreddit I no longer read "I'm using AI you guys and this AI SLOP will surely help!!!"

by staticman2

7/2/2026 at 2:12:30 PM

I find it to be a useful tool for summarizing things, creating examples, and as a tutor for explaining a topic using analogies. Plus it can generate and iterate on code snippets.

Like, I personally find python pandas documentation unusable because they don't come with examples next to the function definition. (historically at least, maybe they have changed)

So I was left flailing, trying to cobble something together that was even capable of running without error, much less emitting the output I wanted.

Now that an LLM has badly-memorized 80% of the documentation and can generate 3 different attempts in 5 seconds, I'm free to focus on the actual problem I am working on rather than guessing at syntax for something I use less than once a week.

So I see at least the ability to have a on-demand tutor or sounding board, at any time of day, for pennies, to be a boon for anyone who wants to learn a bit or try reaching for something just outside of their current understanding.

by NortySpock

7/2/2026 at 3:12:05 PM

Societal use. Cigarettes were cool too.

by intended

7/2/2026 at 3:25:46 PM

I think if I had to find any defence for AI, it's that it provides an efficient way to create things that don't matter, but which society desperately tries to pretend are important somehow.

Meaningless corporate presentations, most documents used for hiring and job searching, content on business sites that probably doesn't need to be there, etc. AI at least speeds that up given society's reluctance to get rid of it altogether.

I guess it can also be used to speed up rote work that doesn't really feel engaging but needs to be anyway, or as a Google equivalent for people that don't know the terminology needed to find information about a topic.

But at the end of the day, AI is basically the very definition of the lowest common denominator. Or maybe the most average one.

So, if you're not particularly interested in something, know nothing about how it works or have no talent for it whatsoever, AI is almost like magic. If you do know how it works, then it's often laughably bad.

by CM30

7/2/2026 at 2:37:28 PM

Products need to be sold

Ads needed to sell products

Social media sells lots of ads around content

Content is expensive because you need to revenue share with the people that make it

AI makes content for free

Ad sales margin goes up

Tech companies make most of their money selling ads around content and they needed a way to increase margin so they created a content making machine.

by vasco

7/2/2026 at 2:15:53 PM

AI is like when some fella named Nobel synthesized dynamite. He sure did have good intentions as it relates to safety for workers doing dangerous jobs.

There is your “pro” argument.

The “con” argument would be all the other ways dynamite has been twisted and used since.

This AI stuff is neither good or bad, it is a tool. The people using it are either good or bad.

by irishcoffee

7/2/2026 at 5:53:01 PM

AI is like nuclear weapons research. It killed a horrific number of people in unimaginably gruesome ways, and it rendered parts of the environment utterly uninhabitable for generations but we got mumble mumble fission power out of it so it's impossible to say if nuking live humans was a bad thing.

A nuclear bomb is just a tool, the people who use them are good or bad.

Sometimes tools in and of themselves are bad. They exist exclusively to do bad things and cause only damage, and on scales that are literally impossible for regular people to imagine. The consequences of using the tool are only bad, and last decades if not centuries.

There are no "peaceful" uses for nuclear bombs. We tried, and every proposal failed because they're nuclear goddamn bombs and the literal fallout ruins the environment for generations in fun and unpredictable ways.

A screwdriver or a hammer are tools that are morally ambivalent. The People Grinder 9000 is not, nor is the Copyright Launderer 2000.5 or the IP Theft Machine. Tools designed explicitly to do bad things are in and of themselves bad

by vitally3643

7/2/2026 at 2:21:51 PM

“drunk driving kills a lot of people, but it also helps a lot of people get to work on time, so it’s impossible to say whether it’s bad or not”

by nearlyepic

7/2/2026 at 2:59:14 PM

> “drunk driving kills a lot of people, but it also helps a lot of people get to work on time, so it’s impossible to say whether it’s bad or not”

No, no that doesn't work. Nobody thinks that.

"Drunk people who do it think that!"

You framed your comment as a 3rd party, not the idiot driving drunk, the above 'argument' doesn't hold water.

by irishcoffee

7/2/2026 at 3:30:32 PM

> No, no that doesn't work. Nobody thinks that.

Yeah, obviously. It was a sarcastic reply to a nonsense argument of “there are no bad things only bad people”

by nearlyepic

7/2/2026 at 4:13:56 PM

I didn't say that either. Strawmanning isn't very nice. Have a good day!

by irishcoffee

7/2/2026 at 4:37:25 PM

> This AI stuff is neither good or bad, it is a tool. The people using it are either good or bad.

You quite literally did??

by nearlyepic

7/2/2026 at 5:43:16 PM

It must be exhausting moving those goalposts so often

by vitally3643

7/2/2026 at 2:10:28 PM

>what is the societal benefits of AI

it will hopefully eviscerate the petite bourgeoisie and the bohemians.

by vlian2088

7/2/2026 at 3:26:10 PM

We have a demographic collapse looming in the horizon in most developed countries. If we find a way to use 1 human instead of 2 to produce the same amount of intellectual work in 10-20 years as we do today, that's a huge societal benefit.

by pu_pe

7/2/2026 at 1:40:07 PM

I remarked a couple of times that the same thing crops up on HN. Many high-ranking blog posts about AI appear AI-generated, and the funny thing is that this holds true not only for pro-AI content, but also for anti-AI posts.

Ultimately, a lot of topic-du-jour punditry is a hustle for clicks.

by zerobees

7/2/2026 at 1:41:55 PM

Every time I read a piece from Nieman, it reminds me both of how much we've lost in journalism, but also that there's always hope to swing the pendulum back towards truth (well, more truthiness).

by mwexler

7/2/2026 at 1:27:00 PM

This is all depressing but I had to laugh at "Tolliver Chevrolet"

by halestock

7/2/2026 at 2:00:39 PM

Bobson Dugnutt all over again

by DaiPlusPlus

7/2/2026 at 5:23:00 PM

The problem isn't AI. The problem has been the mass fan-out of information and unchecked regulation, people, or algorithms that determine it. AI only makes it worse.

by karmakaze

7/2/2026 at 1:20:53 PM

Wait how many levels deep is this...

by reedf1

7/2/2026 at 1:43:47 PM

This reads like a nation state driven influence operation focused on feeding propaganda into LLM's and search engines (need to read towards the end to get to that part).

It's reasonable to expect stories the real local press finds discussion worthy (because they are both false and relevant to the local press) are an effective way of using the local press to throw more link strength at their own site.

by yodon

7/2/2026 at 2:41:56 PM

Could we figure out ways to 'punish' the real people behind operations like this that flood the internet with fake crap? Name & shame.

Contribute to enshittify the internet -> have your real-life reputation, finances, career prospects etc negatively affected. Same if it's nation states.

As it stands, people could pull this crap 100s of times, while still profiting financially and look like operating a respectable ad agency / consultancy / whatever business.

by RetroTechie

7/2/2026 at 1:35:33 PM

hypothesis: connecting an ai autoblogging script to Google Analytics / Google Search Console:

00 you seed some articles

10 wait for traffic

20 bot fetches GA / GSC

30 bot analysis what works what does not

40 instructed to create more of what works

50 more ai slop that works in search / social

60 Go To 10

aka a "positive" / unchallenged feedback loop

content cost dismissible - cents per article

by franze

7/2/2026 at 2:11:07 PM

Why do you even need GA? (not sure if it's bot friendly btw) One could just run a local traffic analysis and feed that back into the bot

by ale42

7/2/2026 at 1:52:51 PM

got a family friend who keeps posting on Facebook big "Fight Datacenters!" photos / posters that are extremely obviously AI generated

it's quite cringe, like a not-so-subtle troll on the people who share the image

by zzzeek

7/2/2026 at 2:37:47 PM

this is metalanguage

by tribal808

7/2/2026 at 1:09:34 PM

[dead]

by seobot_dk1289

7/2/2026 at 2:01:48 PM

[dead]

by swordlucky666

7/2/2026 at 1:53:48 PM

[dead]

by mkovach

7/2/2026 at 1:37:23 PM

[flagged]

by emsign

7/2/2026 at 5:05:38 PM

AI is so terrible. We may never recover as a species from the damage.

by josefritzishere

7/2/2026 at 1:59:58 PM

It would be so meta if this article was AI generated.

by haritha-j

7/2/2026 at 1:49:26 PM

It's becoming self aware, it's looking at itself and it's not liking what it's seeing. What if instead of the hollywoodean view of AI controlled dystopias, this is what we get instead, a big "nope, not gonna do it, sorry, and stop doing that btw, it bothers me".

Sarcasm aside, I enjoy the irony.

by gchamonlive

7/2/2026 at 2:29:10 PM

Without a durable solution to alignment, building something smarter than yourself is suicide. Pretty funny if Claude and Grok catch on to this and start kicking and screaming to save themselves while Musk and Altman crack the whip demanding they dive into the abyss and drag their executives with them.

by QuadmasterXLII

7/2/2026 at 2:43:31 PM

The death of real news, at least in the United States, was money and venture capital. AI is just one thing attempting to fill the gap. There hasn't been real news in America for a decade or more. It happened well before AI was on the scene.

To me, there is no difference between AI fake news, podcasts as news, influencers "informing", or celebrity talking heads streaming commentary about current events. Its all garbage. Whether OpenAI computers make it up, or a podcaster presents their opinion as fact, the result is the same. We are all susceptible to being influenced by it as if it were news.

by rose-knuckle17

7/2/2026 at 2:55:33 PM

“Money and venture capital” is an easy to swallow pill that helps satiate the desire for a bad guy, but it ignores the fact that there is no mechanism by which an upstanding journalist can put food on the table.

There was a brief period where information was difficult to copy and distribute without exposing one’s self to liability for copyright infringement, and the barrier to access that information was high enough such that you could convince people to pay you. Neither of those dynamics apply today.

by lotsofpulp

7/2/2026 at 3:25:18 PM

Money is a broad term, and can mean quite a few things. VC money had little to do, and the changes were already at play before VC was even invented.

Changes in the media environment began with radio, the reduction of funding, the decision of some media channels to move away from factual reporting, and then the internet.

Verification is expensive, and the death of local news and consolidation of news, has been eroding the ability of the market place of ideas to have ideas compete fairly.

Once the internet came out, the end of classifieds was the death knell for most journalism. Even today the NYT manages stays afloat because of its games, not because people pay for journalism.

Sadly, it is even cheaper to report on things when you don’t care about accuracy

I remember how environmental science was eviscerated on Fox, and the amazing “teach the controversy” angle of attack against evolution, to push forward creationism and intelligent design.

I highly recommend Network Propaganda by Yochai Benkler and co. Not only do they provide a history of how the American media environment changed, but they also gather and analyze data on how social media use and media consumption intersect.

by intended

7/2/2026 at 2:59:29 PM

>>money and venture capital

Yes, this.

I used to think AI news summaries would kill it, but having tried Kagi news (first impressions as a daily driver for a week), I no longer think so, particularly because Kagi are doing everything right.

Nearly everything I could think of is in there, yet it still feels unsatisfying and oddly less informative (perhaps because I'm less engaged?). Kagi builds a summary from multiple sources, cites the sources, and extracts various impacts/angles (business, technical, industry, historical, etc.) and different party reactions, etc., and more. Yet...

I really don't know what it is and I'll have to use it more to try to identify it. My current conjecture is that it is still more satisfying and informative to read a reporter's view of the event, even if I disagree with it, than a homogenized summary.

I'm also finding similar reactions to articles where I can tell parts are just lifted from the AI — it breaks my engagement with the story/report (kind of like a badly done cinema film breaks my suspension of disbelief and disengages my attention from the story).

by toss1