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Wired Declares 47% of Medium Content as AI Slop

Tony says publication editors are handling it

Susie Kearley šŸ¹ Guinea pig slave
Never Stop Writing
4 min readDec 16, 2024

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Photo by Rock'n Roll Monkey on Unsplash

Last month, the tech journal Wired reported that they had employed an AI detection company to ascertain whether their suspicion that 40% of Medium content is AI-generated is accurate.

The AI detection company, Pangram Labs, ā€œtook a sampling of 274,466 recent posts over a six-week period and estimated that over 47 percent were likely AI-generated,ā€ said Wired.

This may not surprise those people whoā€™ve been battling with AI-generated responses in their commentsā€”more than real humans. But the stories these bots create are suppressed by Mediumā€™s algorithm, says Mediumā€™s CEO Tony Stubblebine, even if the spam comments are very much present and visible.

Tony told the reporter: ā€œMedium basically runs on human curation now.ā€ He cited 9,000 editors of Mediumā€™s publications, implying they were keeping a lid on AI in their publications. Some are. Some are not. Medium hasnā€™t actually banned AI, but they have said it must not be paywalled.

Tony also cited the curators involved in the boost program as gatekeepers, separating AI-generated content from human-created quality content.

A second AI detection company was tasked by Wired to run a check of their own. Originality AIā€¦

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Never Stop Writing
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Susie Kearley šŸ¹ Guinea pig slave
Susie Kearley šŸ¹ Guinea pig slave

Written by Susie Kearley šŸ¹ Guinea pig slave

Freelance journalist UK. Published in BBC Countryfile, The Mirror, Britain mag etc. Covers writing, health, psychology, memoir, current affairs, & environment.

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