The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) is again on-line after being closed for practically a decade. However the once-venerable Apple information supply seems to have been reworked into a man-made intelligence-generated content material farm by its new homeowners.
The location ceased operations in 2015, however previously week started posting “new” articles, lots of which seem like practically equivalent to these printed by MacRumors and different publications. However these posts had been signed by writers who final labored for TUAW greater than a decade in the past. The web site additionally shows the names of former writers and images that seem like generated by synthetic intelligence.
Christina Warren final wrote for TUAW in 2009, with a sketchy piece she printed on Threads. “Somebody purchased the TUAW area, crammed it with AI-generated slops, after which reused my identify from work once I was 21 years outdated to attempt to pull off some search engine optimization rip-off that will not even work in 2024 as a result of Google has modified Algorithms,” she wrote.
TUAW was initially launched in 2004 and was later shut down by AOL. A lot of the positioning’s unique archives can nonetheless be discovered. Yahoo, which owns Engadget, offered the TUAW area to an entity known as “Net Orange Restricted” in 2024, in response to a press release on the TUAW web site.
Notably, the sale doesn’t embody the TUAW archives. Nevertheless, Net Orange Restricted appears to have discovered a handy (albeit legally doubtful) option to resolve this downside. “The brand new group at Net Orange Restricted is dedicated to revitalizing its heritage and has rigorously rewritten the content material of the archived model on archive.org, making certain that TUAW’s wealthy historical past is preserved whereas updating it to satisfy trendy requirements and relevance,” the web site states. The content material is as follows web page standing.
TUAW didn’t disclose whether or not synthetic intelligence was utilized in these “rewrites”, however a comparability between the unique archive on Engadget and the “rewritten” content material on TUAW exhibits that Net Orange Restricted put little effort into this job. “The article ‘Rewrite’ did not even specify the right identify,” Warren instructed Engadget. “It gave me content material relationship again to 2004. I did not begin writing articles for the positioning till 2007.”
TUAW didn’t instantly reply to emailed questions on its use of synthetic intelligence or why it used former writers’ bylines with AI-generated profile images. Yahoo didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
