Jan 12
Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s latest move is reportedly about selling desirable usernames to the highest bidder.
Jan 12
NASA's Webb Telescope Makes Its First Exoplanet Discovery, A Rocky Planet Similar In Size To Earth
Posted in: Today's ChiliUsing data collected from Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), scientists have confirmed its first exoplanet discovery. Some questions remain, though.
Jan 12
In addition to notable career highlights like being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Beck also amassed an impressive collection of cars.
Jan 12
35 Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar Releases Debuting at Epcot's International Festival of the Arts
Posted in: Today's Chili
The Epcot International Festival of the Arts begins this week at Walt Disney World Resort. It’s the Disney fandom destination for art pieces, collectibles, and prints inspired by all the franchises under the Mouse House umbrella. Aside from creative food booths and Broadway caliber entertainment, the festival’s…
Jan 12
CNET has used an AI to write financial explainers nearly 75 times since November
Posted in: Today's ChiliWith 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. Over at CNET, it’s apparently already happening.
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. pic.twitter.com/CR0IkgUUnq
— Gael Breton (@GaelBreton) January 11, 2023
Online marketer Gael Breton first flagged the content Wednesday on Twitter. 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. But normally when an outlet makes a fundamental shift to the operations of its newsroom such as this, they typically send out a press release or make an announcement on social, anything. It does not appear that CNET has made any sort public note that this program exists beyond the dropdown explainer window.
The quality difference between CNET’s system and the AP’s is a stark one. The AP system is a glorified mail merge, shoving specific pieces of data into preformatted story blanks for daily blotter posts and other highly repetitive journalistic tasks. CNET’s system, on the other hand, appears to be far more capable, able to compose feature length explainer posts on complex financial concepts — a far cry from the journalistic Mad Libs the AP engages in. We’ve reached out to CNET for comment and will update the post when the company responds.
Jan 12
Biden Aides Reportedly Found More Classified Files From VP Days In Private Location
Posted in: Today's ChiliRepublicans have seized on the news, including former President Donald Trump.
Jan 12
Writer-director Phillip Trow’s short Upstairs is tense from the start, as a mom and two of her two adult children await the arrival of the family’s other daughter, who’s bringing her boyfriend to meet them for the first time. A sense of dread hangs heavily over the table, and it only increases as the meal continues.
Jan 12
California isn’t out of the woods yet. At least 17 people are dead, thousands have been forced to evacuate, and cities and municipalities all over the state are looking at millions of dollars in damage from devastating winter weather that began late last month and doesn’t look like it will stop anytime soon.
Jan 12
Long Covid Symptoms Often Fade for People Who Had Mild Infection, Large Study Finds
Posted in: Today's Chili
Research from a team in Israel appears to offer encouraging news: The majority of symptoms tied to long covid might fade away over time for those who initially had a mild case of covid-19. The study found that mild cases had a higher risk of more than a dozen health conditions compared to uninfected controls in the…
Jan 12
It seems Elon Musk’s Twitter is working on a new scheme to make money from the platform. The service appears to be experimenting with an in-app currency called “coins” meant to help creators earn money from the platform, according to screenshots shared by two app researchers.
The feature has been spotted in recent days by Jane Manchun Wong and Nima Owji, app researchers who often publish images of unreleased features. According to their posts, coins appear to be an extension of Twitter’s existing tipping feature. “Coins allow you to support creators who Tweet great content,” reads a screenshot shared by Wong and Owji. An image shared by Owji back in December showed a new “Coins” tab in the same section where users can keep track of their tips.
For now, it’s unclear exactly what Twitter’s plans are for coins or when the feature could launch. The company, which no longer employs communications staff, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But the screenshots suggest Twitter is at least considering featuring coins prominently in its app as both Wong and Owji spotted it in the main sidebar.
Here’s the list of Twitter Awards: https://t.co/PpgHebBWD6pic.twitter.com/BePDVAkzhy
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) January 5, 2023
But coins may not be just for tipping. Wong also spotted an “Awards” feature, which allows people to use coins to buy in-app gifts for others. According to the image shared by Wong, users would be able to buy gifts for as little as one coin (called “Mind Blown”) or as much as 5000 (called “Gold”). It’s not clear how much coins will cost, though Twitter would presumably get a cut of revenue generated from coin purchases.
So far, Elon Musk doesn’t seem to have publicly weighed in on coins or awards, but he has spoken broadly about wanting more ways for creators to be rewarded. He’s said that Twitter Blue revenue would potentially “give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators” and that “creator monetization for all forms of content” is also in the works.
It’s also worth noting that despite the “coins’ moniker, the feature doesn’t seem to have any cryptocurrency tie-ins, at least for now. “Twitter Coin is still under development and we don’t even have any evidence that it’s something related to crypto,” Owji noted. “Don’t let the scammers fool you.”
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