Medium is experiencing a huge surge in AI-generated content: Report
Medium, the popular online publishing platform, is struggling with an influx of artificial intelligence (AI)-generated content. Despite its recent financial success and commitment to human authorship, there's a growing presence of robot bloggers on the site. This trend has been flagged by two independent AI detection firms, Originality AI and Pangram Labs. WIRED asked these companies to analyze Medium. Their analyses indicate that a large chunk of Medium's content may now be generated by AI.
AI-generated content on Medium
Pangram Labs analyzed 274,466 posts over six weeks and estimated that over 47% were likely AI-generated. The Originality AI analysis compared samples of Medium posts from 2018 to this year. In 2018, an estimated 3.4% of posts were likely AI-generated, as AI tools were not that widely used. However, this year, out of a sample of 473 articles published, over 40% were suspected to be AI-generated.
Medium CEO disputes AI content issue
Medium's CEO, Tony Stubblebine, has disputed the significance of these findings and the idea that they reveal a problem with AI content on his platform. While he doesn't deny an increase in AI-generated articles on Medium, he challenges the efficacy of AI detectors used in these analyzes, WIRED says. Stubblebine argues that these tools cannot distinguish between posts entirely generated by AI and those where AI is used more subtly.
Stance on AI content and moderation
Stubblebine claims Medium is doing a good job of controlling its AI content with a mix of general-purpose spam filtering and human moderation. He also stresses that many of the accounts posting tons of AI-generated content have little to no readership. However, some of the articles flagged as probable AI-generated by Pangram Labs and Originality AI have received hundreds of 'claps'—a readership well above zero.
Updated AI policy and human curation
In light of the emergence of robotic bloggers, Medium has updated its AI policy this year. The platform no longer permits AI writing to be paywalled in its Partner program, get broader human-curated distribution from its Boost program, or promote affiliate links. Stubblebine emphasizes that Medium now mostly relies on human curation with 9,000 editors for its publications and further human evaluation for 'boosted' or more widely distributed stories.
Mixed reactions to Medium's approach toward AI content
The response to Medium's AI content approach is mixed among its writers and editors. Eric Pierce, founder of Medium's largest pop culture publication Fanfare, supports the platform's stance, saying human curators help spotlight the best human writing. Content marketing writer Marcus Musick has raised concern over the prevalence of AI-generated writing on the platform, citing an article he suspects was AI-generated that went viral with over 13,500 'claps.'
