In case you’ve been following Apple information and rumors for the final decade, you may bear in mind The Unofficial Apple Weblog, or TUAW. TUAW was shut down and the positioning was folded into Engadget manner again in 2015, however this month, a zombie TUAW web site reappeared.
Because it seems, the TUAW area title was bought by a Hong Kong-based promoting company, and it now hosts stolen content material rewritten utilizing AI. TUAW began posting AI-generated content material earlier this week, with all of it stolen from websites like MacRumors and 9to5Mac.
The brand new TUAW web site takes articles from Apple information websites and runs them by means of AI to alter the wording. There are a number of stolen photos which were lifted from MacRumors for these articles, with the graphics used created by our in-house graphic designer. Shortly after we revealed an iPhone 17 “Slim” overview, for instance, TUAW revealed an virtually an identical article that makes use of our stolen imagery and reads prefer it was run by means of a thesaurus.
The corporate that purchased TUAW additionally shamelessly used the names of people that labored on the web site a few years in the past for creator bylines, which meant this stolen content material regarded prefer it was coming from folks like Christina Warren and Brett Terpstra.
Warren was capable of get her title and the names of different outstanding writers eliminated after publicizing the zombie web site on Mastodon, however the AI content material stays. TUAW modified the Christina Warren byline on its web site to Mary Brown, making different comparable generic title adjustments. There are not any precise writers at TUAW, simply AI-generated photos and biographies to associate with the AI content material.
The promoting company that bought the TUAW area title (Internet Orange Restricted) didn’t buy any TUAW content material, however went again and generated AI-rewritten variations of archived TUAW articles from archive.org. 1000’s of those articles are on the positioning alongside newly generated AI tales.
It’s price noting that the corporate that purchased the TUAW area title additionally bought the iLounge area title a number of years in the past and resurrected that web site with low-quality content material.
TidBITS, The Verge, Engadget, 404Media, and different websites have executed deep dives into TUAW and the corporate behind it which can be price testing. TUAW’s proprietor doesn’t look like primarily based in america, and it is unclear if TUAW will likely be taken down even with authorized complaints.
Readers of MacRumors, 9to5Mac, and different tech websites will need to keep away from TUAW going ahead. As TidBITS factors out, Google is a significant factor in what is going on on with TUAW as a result of it is not de-incentivizing AI-generated content material, even on a web site the place it is virtually all AI content material. TUAW articles are displaying up on the primary web page of search outcomes alongside authentic tech websites.
