Major brands unknowingly running ads on AI-generated spam sites, exacerbating the plague of unreliable information on the web.
Key Takeaways:
The digital advertising landscape is witnessing an unforeseen entanglement. More than 140 major brands are inadvertently powering low-quality, AI-generated websites filled with bot-produced content. This recent revelation is from an investigative report by NewsGuard, a media watchdog that tracks the credibility of online content.
Imagine this: you’re casually browsing AlaskaCommons.com and stumble across an article penned by “Chelsea Waller”, a self-proclaimed “dedicated journalist with a passion for uncovering the truth.” A line in one of her pieces catches your attention: “As an AI language model, I cannot predict whether or not John Wick 4 is going to be a finale of a saga that will be remembered for years to come.”
This website is among numerous others, detected by NewsGuard, where top-tier brands like Citigroup and Subaru are unintentionally featuring ads. Such websites are notorious for churning out low-quality, AI-generated content. Google claims to have purged ads from many such platforms, but the spots remain conspicuous on others.
This unanticipated entanglement stems from the widespread use of programmatic Google ads. This automated ad placement system may inadvertently benefit these bot-infested websites. Even as advertisers remain oblivious, these spam-infused sites capitalize on their content and profit from running ads alongside them.
Some sites on NewsGuard’s radar publish staggering volumes of content weekly. World-Today-News.com, for instance, not only rehashes articles from The New York Times but also displays AI-generated headlines. Ironically, ads found their way to such stories too.
MedicalOutline.com, another notorious player, spews health misinformation while hosting ads for big names like Subaru, Citigroup, and GNC. The site promotes dubious content like “What are 5 natural remedies for ADHD?” and “Can lemon cure skin allergy?”
Though Google prohibits ads on spammy, auto-generated content, its control seems to be slipping. This is evident in Google’s conflict surrounding AI content. On one hand, the flooding of automatically generated content threatens the credibility of its core search business. However, outright rejection of AI-generated content would be a double standard, given Google’s large-scale integration of AI text into search.
Newsguard’s findings are a wake-up call for advertisers and tech companies alike. As AI tools grow in sophistication, detection of such spam becomes increasingly challenging. Nevertheless, the demand for better monitoring, regulation, and countermeasures for AI-generated content on the digital advertising landscape has never been more urgent.
