AI and Content Theft

How is your blog faring after the introduction of AI, that is scraping blogs for quick answers, that are stolen from content creators?

I believe this is similar to what happened in the 60s,70s and 80s when the unions warned Americans that our manufacturing was ALL going to move over seas.

Most of us rolled our eyes. Our manufacturing all going overseas? That could never happen! Here we are 65 years later wondering if bringing back manufacturing is even possible.

Similarly, if AI takes the place of content creators, no new information will be added to the “whole” of the internet. My numbers are down thousands of views a month, while my subscribers are at an all time high. That does not make sense, unless I’m part of the information harvesting. And even if AI isn’t quoting me directly, the fact that it’s gathering instantly retrievible data from millions of real people, people who lived that information: is wrong.

I want to be able to opt out of this experiment. I want new information, generated by real people, in the categories I’m interested in.

If you agree, then we may be able to fight this.

If you just keep going, no matter how pretty your pages are and no matter how much information you put out there: this medium will dissappear; as people stop wanting to read and learn in long format. If we decide to instead get the cliff notes of someone’s life’s manuscript: then we have ultimately killed the golden goose of information.

There is a real possibility that information will stop flowing in this type of medium and we will lose new thoughts as blogs die. If you are using AI to actually write your blog (I have seen some of these already) then shame on you, for stealing content without any experience in what you are covering.

There is no way to easily stop AI from scraping your blog without also making it harder for humans to read your writing, too.

Let me know if you are seeing an unexplainable drop in your blog viewing numbers. Are you guilty (as I am guilty of this, too.) of using the AI “ready to consume” information without taking the time to read the source material?

I don’t see a good answer to this. I’m not sure if we are going to lose all human generated expert opinions. Are we, as writers and “doers”, going to survive the “easy information” age?

I’m genuinely interested to hear if anyone else is seeing this on their stats page and if anyone has an answer to getting your information stolen. (There is a blog that started this year directly stealing from my posted blog entries. They link back to me in the footnotes, so I can see what they are stealing if someone eventually clicks on it. I’ve asked them to stop, and they haven’t. It’s run by a young mother who used to work for mother earth news. Apparently if I write anything on my blog: she considers it fair game and reposts it under her blog with a footnote reference wayyyy at the bottom of her blog entry. If you are writing something based on someone else’s work, and the reader has to work hard to find that reference: then it’s stealing. I’m disgusted. I’m pretty sure she had AI write her posts, despite her long resume (that she writes extensively on in her “about” page.) Her blog was started this year but she has more content up than I do, after twelve years. So: I’m not the only person she’s stealing from.)

How about you? Have you checked who is linking to you, and how they are using your information? Information theft is real. Make sure it’s not happening to you, too.

Crazy Green Thumbs