A financial news site website that receives some of the most web traffic in the world has just been accused of using artificial intelligence (AI) to plagiarize content from other websites.
Investing.com, based out of Tel Aviv, Israel, and owned by the multinational firm Joffre Capital – a venture capital firm that specializes in buying out tech startups – is an online financial news and information portal that provides market data and news and feature articles on investing tips and trends.
A report from Semafor media reporter Max Tani reports that the content that comes out of Investing.com isn't written by human reporters but by an AI program. (Related: Amazon to begin testing Digit – a six-foot-tall humanoid robot that might end up REPLACING human warehouse workers.)
In his report, Tani provided three instances of Investing.com blatantly ripping off articles written by actual journalists.
In early November, the blog CryptoNewsLand wrote a short article claiming that the cryptocurrency asset XRP "has witnessed a resurgence in both its price and investor activity."
Just a few hours later, Investing.com, came out with its article claiming that "the cryptocurrency XRP has witnessed a significant resurgence in recent weeks, as marked by a boost in its price and trading volume." The Investing.com article also cited the same nine statistics as those used in the CryptoNewsLand story and the same dataset from cryptocurrency research firm Santiment.
In another incident involving the financial and investing advice company and its news website The Motley Fool, the company's writers compared Microsoft's stock performance to Google's in one article. The Motley Fool noted that Microsoft's stock is poised to rise thanks to growth in the company's AI and gaming businesses, while Google's stock is also expected to rise in value due to the revenue it brings in from Search and YouTube.
Just an hour later, Investing.com published its article comparing the same two stocks and making the same points about their strengths and weaknesses.
In October, the Barcelona-based digital and fiat currency news site FXStreet published a story about the end of a legal dispute between Grayscale Investments and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Several hours later, Investing.com published its piece about the situation, citing the same sources.
AI-based "news" a threat to actual journalists
Every time Investing.com publishes an article that plagiarized other articles using AI, it puts out a disclosure at the very bottom of each story that notes that each article was "generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor." But unlike news aggregators and other kinds of online news portals, Investing.com makes its readers think that it writes its own articles by not linking or crediting other news sources.
"Using AI to rewrite exclusive content from competitors is a threat to journalism and to original content creation," said Pete Mongui, head of content at FXStreet, who told Semafor that he and his team had begun to notice that Investing.com was plagiarizing its content several months ago.
Mongui said he was disheartened because FXStreet has a 60-person team that monitors and quickly analyzes developments in global currencies, digital and fiat. All Investing.com does is run an AI program that is then proofread by a human editor, eroding all of the world FXStreet and other financial news websites as it does.
"This is one of the multiple examples we have found with simple comparisons of their content to several of our articles and many other media outlets in the industry," said Mongui. "For us, this is particularly damaging as FXStreet is one of Investing.com's main competitors."
Worse yet, Investing.com may not be the only one. Other up-and-coming online news portals are also using similar AI programs to plagiarize content put out by other, more reputable websites.
"This isn't truly a new thing," wrote Lawrence Greenberg, senior vice president and chief legal officer at The Motley Fool, in an email. "We have seen, and acted against, people plagiarizing our content from time to time, and if you're right about what's going on, AI has achieved a level of human intelligence that copies good content and makes it mediocre."
Watch this clip of Republican Will Hurd during an interview talking about how the government has "got to take steps now" to regulate artificial intelligence before it's too late.
This video is from the News Clips channel on Brighteon.com.
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