We can’t say for certain, but it seems mighty likely that one of the highest-trafficking financial sites in the US is plagiarizing other websites’ content using artificial intelligence.
Per a scoop from Semafor‘s Maxwell Tani, Investing.com has in recent months published multiple pieces that are very similar in language and content to articles posted just hours before on other websites.
In one early November example, the website owned by the Israel-based tech buyout firm Joffre Capital published a short item about a rise in a crypto token price that used comparable vernacular and identical statistics to one that had been posted less than an hour and a half before on the CryptoNewsLand blog.
The lead to the Investing.com piece: “The cryptocurrency has witnessed a significant resurgence in recent weeks, as marked by a boost in its price and trading volume.”
Compare that to the one on the crypto blog: “XRP has witnessed a resurgence in both its price and investor activity.”
According to a footnote on the Investing.com piece, the blurb had been “generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor.”
Tani provides two other instances of Investing.com‘s apparent penchant for AI ripoffs, one of which occurred on November 2, the very same day as the CryptoNewsLand blog debacle.
Another example that occurred in October, in which the financial site published an article very similar to reporting from the crypto news site FXStreet, has been taken down. When you search the link to the struck Investing.com piece, however, Google still provides a preview to content that bears a resemblance to FXStreet‘s.
You might argue that the financial news site is simply aggregating content, as other websites including Futurism do regularly. But when bloggers properly contextualize the news, they always cite where the information came from for transparency and so that readers can check out the original source firsthand. Nowhere in Investing.com‘s posts that remain up are the sources cited or linked.
Although this is far from the first or last time AI has or will spit out plagiarized content, it’s significant that a respected financial news publication is the subject of such claims because, well, news sites just aren’t supposed to do that.
Unfortunately, this also isn’t the first time once-respectable news sources have been found using AI to copy other’ work. Earlier this year, for instance, we caught CNET using AI to publish work that strongly appeared to plagiarize the work of other publications.
It’s bad enough when copycat content farms use AI to rip off the work of others, but for sites that are considered legitimate to do so represents an upsetting trend — and given how fractured and shrunken the news industry has already become, it’s hard to imagine there will be any universal standards created or enforced until it’s way too late.
More on AI content: Top Execs at Sports Illustrated’s Publisher Fired After AI Debacle
