Things That Make You Go Hmmm - 11/21/2024
A semi-regular collection of notable tech industry developments, with commentary on what actually matters.
AI Enters Traditional Media
Major media outlets are actively experimenting with AI integration, signaling a shift in how traditional content might be created and presented.
The Wall Street Journal is testing automated summaries, via The Verge:
The Wall Street Journal is experimenting with AI-generated article summaries that appear at the top of its news stories. The summaries appear as a "Key Points" box with bullets summarizing the piece. The Verge spotted the test on a story about Trump's plans for the Department of Education, and the Journal confirmed it's trialing the feature to see how readers respond.
Also from The Verge, ESPN is launching an AI personality:
ESPN is testing an AI-generated avatar with the Saturday college football show SEC Nation. Dubbed FACTS, it's going to be "...promoting education and fun around sports analytics" with information drawn from ESPN Analytics, which includes data like the Football Power Index (FPI), player and team statistics, and game schedules.
AI Content Challenges
Platforms are struggling to balance AI content's potential with quality control and authenticity verification.
Spotify faces AI-generated spam, taking over legitimate artist profiles:
A sophisticated fraud operation will use multiple fake labels and multiple distributors in order to avoid having a single point of failure. Besides bot accounts, a number of bad actors have access to real people's compromised accounts.
Substack's AI reality, via Wired:
(..) a new analysis shared exclusively with WIRED indicates that Substack hosts plenty of AI-generated writing, some of which is published in newsletters with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
A Tolstoy as a unit of measure
Platform terms have grown to unreasonable lengths, raising questions about meaningful user consent. @kgjenkins shares:
"A Tolstoy is the metric we are using to emphasize just how large these EULA webs can become. One Tolstoy is the length of the novel War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, or 587,287 words."
Discord EULA is 5.63 Tolstoys
Google EULA is 9.33 Tolstoys
Reddit EULA is 11.58 Tolstoys
Twitter EULA is 15.83 Tolstoys
Snapchat is 17.10 Tolstoys
A study found that X’s algorithm now loves two things: Republicans and Elon Musk
Platform algorithms increasingly shape information flow and political discourse...
The Verge writes:
Musk’s numbers “outpaced the general engagement trends observed across the platform,” they concluded. (This paper isn’t the first time it’s been suggested that X adjusted its algorithm to specifically boost Musk’s account.) The researchers also found that other Republican-leaning accounts they examined saw similar boosts that started in July, albeit to a lesser degree.
Two-thirds of news influencers are men — and most have never worked for a news organization
The shift to social media news delivery is creating new demographic imbalances in information distribution.
Across all five social media sites, two-thirds of news influencers (63%) are men. The percentage of male news influencers was highest on Facebook (67%) and YouTube (68%) and the gender gap was smallest on TikTok — where 50% of news influencers are men.
Pew found that news influencers who have not worked in the news industry are more likely to be on YouTube and TikTok. “Half of these news influencers have a YouTube presence, roughly twice the share of their counterparts who have worked for news organizations (23%),” the report notes. “Similarly, three-in-ten news influencers who have not worked for a news organization use TikTok, compared with just 19% of those who have links to a news outlet.”
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