The Verge just exposed what's gone wrong with CNET, including its use of AI-generated articles

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Link here, and this is worth reading in its entirety:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/19/23562966/cnet-ai-written-stories-red-ventures-seo-marketing

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CNET was once a high-flying powerhouse of tech reporting that commanded a $1.8 billion purchase price when it was acquired by CBS in 2008. Since then, it has fallen victim to the same disruptions and business model shifts as the rest of the media industry, resulting in CBS flipping the property to Red Ventures for just $500 million in 2020.

Red Ventures’ business model is straightforward and explicit: it publishes content designed to rank highly in Google search for “high-intent” queries and then monetizes that traffic with lucrative affiliate links. Specifically, Red Ventures has found a major niche in credit cards and other finance products. In addition to CNET, Red Ventures owns The Points Guy, Bankrate, and CreditCards.com, all of which monetize through credit card affiliate fees. The CNET AI stories at the center of the controversy are straightforward examples of this strategy: “Can You Buy a Gift Card With a Credit Card?” and “What Is Zelle and How Does It Work?” are obviously designed to rank highly in searches for those topics. Like CNET, Bankrate and CreditCards.com have also published AI-written articles about credit cards with ads for opening cards nestled within. Both Bankrate and CreditCards.com directed questions about the use of AI to Lance Davis, the vice president of content at Red Ventures; CNET’s disclosure also included Davis as a point of contact until last week.

This type of SEO farming can be massively lucrative. Digital marketers have built an entire industry on top of credit card affiliate links, from which they then earn a generous profit. Various affiliate industry sites estimate the bounty for a credit card signup to be around $250 each. A 2021 New York Times story on Red Ventures pegged it even higher, at up to $900 per card.

Viewed cynically, it makes perfect sense for Red Ventures to deploy AI: it is flooding the Google search algorithm with content, attempting to rank highly for various valuable searches, and then collecting fees when visitors click through to a credit card or mortgage application. AI lowers the cost of content creation, increasing the profit for each click. There is not a private equity company in the world that can resist this temptation.

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And, as the article notes, there's no reason to fund actual tech news, once they start doing this.

Btw, the introductory paragraphs that I snipped mention Futurism, which broke the story. Earlier threads I posted about this:

https://democraticunderground.com/10143017812

https://democraticunderground.com/100217572530

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