CNET has used an AI to write financial explainers nearly 75 times since November

With the rapid evolution of AI chatbot systems like Chat-GPT, VALL-E, and BlenderBot 3 and their growing abilities to generate text on par with human writers, robots coming to take your writing job is becoming a viable threat. On Wednesday, The Byte reported that the popular tech site appears to have employed "automation technology" to produce a series of financial explainer posts beginning in November 2022 under the byline of CNET Money Staff. It is only after clicking the byline that the site reveals that "This article was generated using automation technology and thoroughly edited and fact-checked by an editor on our editorial staff." Looks like @CNET (DR 92 tech site) just did their coming out about using AI content for SEO articles. In all, the tech site produced 73 such posts since last November on subjects such as "Should You Break an Early CD for a Better Rate?" or "What is Zelle and How Does It Work?" Since news of its activities broke at the start of the day, CNET has subsequently taken down the CNET Money Staff bio page as well as removed the "Staff" from numerous posts it had written. Using text generators isn't currently a widespread practice throughout the journalistic sphere but outlets like the Associated Press and Washington Post have used them for various low-level copywriting tasks -- the latter employing them to write about high school football and the equally unimportant 2016 Rio Olympics.