The advent of generic AI has turned much of the Internet into a mind-numbingly unfamiliar floodplain.
In the latest sign of the times, Economic Times – The 2nd most read English language newspapers in the world as of 2012 – The word “Kafkaesque” was chosen as the “word of the day”.“Earlier this week. But even a brief look at the accompanying illustration shows that the piece involved very little, if any, human oversight.
The issue is the image at the top of the piece – which, to be fair, is labeled as being AI-generated – which shows an attempt to write words on a blackboard. But it also clearly struggles with writing it, settling on jumbled characters that write something like “Kafkesliu”, which is clearly not even a word.
This is a particularly vexing blabbering given the special word. Traversing the Wasteland of Online AI Slope does Often times I feel as if I’m trapped in a work by Franz Kafka, in the sense that it’s a surreal and illogical experience that seems impossible to get out of.
Netizens have been dunk on screwup all day long, but until now Economic Times The image of the decapitation has been left live on the article. The newspaper did not respond to a request for comment.
A quick perusal of the newspaper’s flood of “Word of the Day” features – it seems to publish more than one per day, with its “Kafkeslieu” flub running three a day alone – reveals that the AI error is not a one-off. A Write about the word “reflective”For example, one image shows a coffee cup labeled “selfie.”
The mistakes highlight how the news industry is trying to reinvent itself as publishers brace against a torrent of low-grade AI-generated content. Media executives are preparing for AI to deal a fatal blow to the journalism industry as the technology’s advent has left a devastating hole in web traffic.
A report A report published last year found that more than half of the Internet now consists of AI slop. The result could be described as Kafkaesque. Or maybe “Kafkesliu.”
“In simple terms, Kafkaesque is what happens when reality ceases to make sense but you still insist on compliance.” Economic Times‘More than likely states the AI-generated copy. “According to Merriam-Webster the word is pronounced käf-kə-ˈesk.”
The cold repetition of the word certainly highlights the reality in which we increasingly find ourselves trapped. Tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT have virtually turned our media environment upside down – into an “absurd, oppressive, and strangely unrealistic” fate, in the words of Economic Times.
More on AI Journalism: Media executives are preparing for AI to destroy the journalism industry
