Archived: I Paid $365.63 to Replace 404 Media With AI

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datetime="2024-06-25T13:02:33.000Z">6/25/2024</time><contexter-summary class="p-summary entry-summary" itemprop="abstract" slot="summary"><p>Paying a freelancer on Fiverr to create a plagiarizing ChatGPT-powered news site revealed an industry of middlemen and services trying to game Google Search.</p></contexter-summary><contexter-keywordset itemprop="keywords" slot="keywords"><span rel="category tag" class="p-category" itemprop="keywords">News</span></contexter-keywordset><a is="contexter-link" href="https://www.404media.co/i-paid-365-63-to-replace-404-media-with-ai/" class="read-link main-link" itemprop="sameAs" slot="read-link">Read</a><a href="https://context.center/timegate/https://www.404media.co/i-paid-365-63-to-replace-404-media-with-ai/" is="contexter-link" target="_blank" class="read-link archive-link" itemprop="archivedAt" slot="archive-link">Archived</a></contexter-box>

I Paid $365.63 to Replace 404 Media With AI

Emanuel Maiberg

6/25/2024

Paying a freelancer on Fiverr to create a plagiarizing ChatGPT-powered news site revealed an industry of middlemen and services trying to game Google Search.

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Over the last week I have published dozens of news articles and blogs about technology without lifting a finger on a news website called Prototype.Press. The articles are fairly short, but written in perfect English, and as far as I can tell, accurate. They are also very nicely laid out and categorized into “tech,” “science,” “AI,” and other sections, making it easier for visitors to navigate the cornucopia of content I publish on the site every day. On Monday, June 17, I published 53 articles on everything from the “Top Internet Service Providers in South Dakota” to how “AI-generated images in Google Search Results have provided access to an alternate reality.”

If that latter story sounds familiar that’s because it is a blatant, uncredited rip-off of a story I published on 404 Media the same day. I was able to publish it alongside 52 other articles that day all by myself because I created an entirely autonomous, ChatGPT-powered technology news site that steals other people’s original reporting for just $365.63.

It wasn’t hard to set up, and didn’t require one of the most advanced large language models in the world, but since this is the second technology news and investigations website I’m running these days, I outsourced its creation to a Fiverr freelancer in Turkey. I told him what I wanted, picked a layout, and two days later got a fully operational website.

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