In a series of reports, WIRED senior writer Kate Knibbs has exposed vast networks of “zombie” media sites that have been taken over by opportunistic AI profiteers. Her initial report about the fate of the Hairpin, a beloved indie blog that shut down in 2013 but churns out scores of AI-generated chum articles today, led Knibbs to discover just how widespread this issue has become. As Knibbs exclusively reported, a single self-styled tech entrepreneur in Serbia operates over 2,000 of these sites, including famed Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily, an official Vatican website, and TrumpPlaza.com.
The problem extends beyond that one network, as did Knibbs’ reporting. In a subsequent story, she identified another network of newspaper sites that had been given over to AI clickbait. The nearly 100-year-old Clayton Register had been absorbed by a wider network, likely based in Poland, of similarly compromised sites.
These sites are a harbinger of what awaits the internet at large. As generative AI becomes more pervasive, and media entities continue to go out of business, the internet will increasingly become a battleground of AI stories contending for cheap SEO wins. Those articles, in turn, will increasingly drown out actual journalism. By following the problem to its root, Knibbs has exposed an alarming truth about the internet and media today: Old sites never die; they just get turned into spam.
