We’ve written about and spoken about Artificial Intelligence for well over a year now in it’s modern form. This amazing technology known as Generative A-I allows you to tap into the knowledge of the world with a single prompt.
From writing essays to document summaries and marketing blurbs, even recipes and travel advice – AI engines like ChatGPT, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot are stunning.
However, we as a society need to accept and understand how this can and will be used as a disruptor. Jobs will change, some will be replaced, people will re-skill, some jobs will be easier as a result of this A-I revolution.
One area though that has raised it’s head as a concern for the media industry is the use of AI to generate content like news or reviews. EFTM stands firm in our view that AI has no place in generating articles that would be considered news or reviews.
This is not about saying no to AI overall. We see great benefits to AI within our workflows, but if you’re reading news – it should be written by a Human.
If you’re reading a review of a product – it should be written by the human who used that product.
It’s for this reason we’ve joined with likeminded publishers to launch 100% Human.
Our colleagues and peers Stephen Fenech (TechGuide), Val Quinn (GadgetGuy) and Djuro Sen (Image Matrix Tech) have aligned on this initiative to not only make this commitment, but ensure our readers know that our content is 100% Human.
The concern I have going forward is that It’s very easy right now for someone to create a “bot” which reads our sites and takes all the comments and thoughts on a particular product and re-write it as a singular review.
AI has it’s issues, hallucinations are a big risk – getting the information wrong. There’s nothing to say an AI Generated review won’t just make things up to fill the void.
Additionally, our content is being used without permission or compensation by Generative AI Models to feed their knowledge databases and allow this to happen.
It’s bad for readers because you can’t trust an AI Generated review, and it’s bad for publishers because we’re having our personal views taken and reproduced without permission.
This undermines our industry, and the trust that readers have in what they view online.
So the line in the sand for us is that content – news, announcements, reviews, anything we publish here at EFTM will be written by a Human.
Myself, Scott Plowman, Daniel Tyson, Joshua Dowling, we are real people, with bills to pay, lives to lead. Random names you see on another website, or the idea of “Staff Writers” being unnamed could well mean it’s AI content – content you simply cannot trust.
For complete clarity, we the writer, the person publishing the article – we are 100% Human. But as we encourage you to do in your job, play with AI, understand it – see how it might assist you in your role.
We are not against AI, or using AI. I for example will often take a long document like an 80 Page Government resource or legislation and feed it into AI to help me find the key areas, question the content or compare two documents to understand the content within.
I won’t however take the output of AI and paste it into an article. I’ll use it to reduce the time I need to spend scanning that document and hone my research.
You’ll also see fun AI Generated images on our articles from time to time. These will be generic, eye grabbers, not product images or fakes of something that is actually real.
Bottom line, AI has a place, we get that, and it’s powerful.
But if you read that something is new, broken, shutting down, or being announced here at EFTM. It was written by a Human.
If you read a review here at EFTM, know that the person who’s name tops that article used that item, drove that car, wore that watch. We are 100% Human, and proud of it.
Australians, more than ever, need to support real-media. Read and share content from Australian publishers, large and small.
100% Human is just launching and we expect more publishers to join us as time goes by.
We appreciate your support.
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Trev is a Technology Commentator, Dad, Speaker and Rev Head.
He produces and hosts two popular podcasts, EFTM and Two Blokes Talking Tech. He also appears on over 50 radio stations across Australia weekly, and is the resident Tech Expert on Channel 9’s Today Show each day and appears regularly on A Current Affair.
Father of three, he is often found down in his Man Cave.
